CingularDuality

That's fine, nice to see you found a history text, but we're at war now with terrorist groups that are middle eastern and muslim. You'll never hear me say than only muslims have ever attacked us, nor will you ever hear me say that all muslims are evil terrorists. But you cannot deny the fact that our enemy today is of middle eastern and muslim influence.

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improbablecause

A few extremists do something crazy... so it's fair to stereotype all Muslims now? Don't be ridiculous. Over 1.5 billion out of 6.5 billion people on Earth are Muslims. Sure you won't say all Muslims are terrorists, but that's the implication everybody gets when you joke around the way you do.

By the way, you've actually reverted to a classical racist rebuttal: "Man, black people are lazy... (You get called out by somebody.) Oh no, I'm not a racist, I just think some black people are lazy. I know plenty of black people aren't!" Stop this line of thinking. It's silly and only creates more racial/religious tension that isn't necessary in the least bit. Once again, it was delusional and evil human beings that commit acts of terror, not a race or a religion.

Oh, by the way, you say we're at war with "terrorist groups" -- what does the terrorist look like to you? Let me guess... wearing Muslim garb, brown-skinned, probably some guy trotting around in the desert with an AK-47, and yells out incomprehensible phrases as they charge in with dynamite strapped to their chest. Am I right?

DudeMan

niow not thast i disagree cings statement was blanket, and well just plain wrong.

but of those that you have submitted and any more you can think of, which ones were suicide bombings, and which involved religion as a motive. i would be very few, however every bomb exploding due to ISLAMIC extremism is directly relevent to the religion of the people involved.... why because the news report would nto read ..." islamic extremeist blows himself up, leaving a message he will recieve 100 versions of heaven for killing the western infidel" it would read..."man blows himself up... not sure why"....

im sorry, i live in England, and have had the IRA killing people in my country for decades, i do not refer to them as catholic extremists, because they are not, they killed people to give ireland back to the Irish, and before anyone mentions iraq or afganistan, the twin towers fell long before them.... i still call the bombers islamic extremists... because they are.

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The Queen
"Those who perpetrate these brutal acts against innocent people should know that they will not change our way of life,"
Atrocities such as these simply reinforce our sense of community

TheFeniX
"Guns don't kill people: effeminate men in green tunics do"

DudeMan

you tell cing, and everyone who agrees with him here that he is making all muslims look bad with his joke. or any joke for that matter... you see this is highly ironic to me, because it is islamic extremist nob heads who are making islam look bad and not us.

it is not a classic racial rebuttal at all, it is fact, not all muslims are sucide bombing ass holes... but most if not all SUICIDE bombing ass holes are muslim. that is a fact, it is just a fact you find hard to swallow. you talk about what we see as terroists, i see a terrorist as anyone crazy enough to claim innocent lives, the IRA did not sterotype to your classic picture of a terrorist,

the fact remains as long as suicide bombings are carried out in the name of religion, and even supported by some religious leaders within the muslim faith, the religion of a bomber will be relevent. simple as that. i just find this highly ironic that we have to keep quiet from mentioning the word islamic or muslim around terorist or suicde bomber, yet they freely express that they are carrying out gods will.

noone here has said all you muslims are terrorists, your all the same blah blah blah... infact the only person i see saying that is you, trying to illustrate what we are implying maybe.

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The Queen
"Those who perpetrate these brutal acts against innocent people should know that they will not change our way of life,"
Atrocities such as these simply reinforce our sense of community

TheFeniX
"Guns don't kill people: effeminate men in green tunics do"

improbablecause

Ironic? What? I don't think the ones agreeing with CingularDuality even realized how prejudicial their comments/beliefs are. My entire point from before was this: should we be ignorant enough to label all persons of a given race/religion based on the actions of a tiny, tiny minority? Sure, these delusional bastards are making Islam look bad... but that's only because we consider their race/religion to be relevant to their actions. They aren't. They skew the core Islamic teachings until they are no longer true Muslims.

If some psychotic white serial killer killed in the name of Jesus Christ (or the generic "God"), does that imply Christianity is a breeding ground for murderers? No. They killed because they've got psychological problems, not because their race/religion somehow willed them to. Again, their race/religion is irrelevant. There are over 1.5 billion Muslims in the world, it should come as no surprise there will be a few delusional bastards cropping up.

No. No they are not. They may call themselves Muslims and spew whatever idiotic garbage they want, but you won't find a single true Muslim who will tell you Islam stands for terrorism.

But lets follow your train of thought anyway. All suicide bombers come from poverty stricken areas. All suicide bombers are uneducated. All suicide bombers have been brain-washed in one way or another into believing what they are doing is for the greater good. See how race/religion doesn't have to come into play? That's because it isn't a race/religion problem, the problem is a lot bigger than such simplistic characteristics. Yet, I don't see the media discussing these topics. It's sad and depresses me.

I personally believe that the reason it isn't discussed is because the real issue is too complex. People need somebody to blame (and fast!). For them, the easiest route is the surest route; the tried and true of ignorance: race and religion.

EXACTLY! And that is how I see it. I merely painted the typical American picture of a terrorist, I personally don't believe that all of them look like that.

No, I don't want people to keep quiet about it. I want people to realize they are stereotyping an entire people for the actions of a few. I want people to know that out of 1.5 billion Muslims, there is only an extremely tiny portion of them that are vile animals who warp Islamic teachings.

Can we really condemn billions of good people for the actions of a few?

You nailed it right on the head. Nobody may say it out loud, I mean, why would you? But the prejudice is still there, and that is what I'm trying to show you. It's so deeply ingrained in the minds of the average American that they don't even pay notice to it. I bet if a full-bearded Muslim of middle-eastern descent, wearing Muslim garb and carrying a thick backpack, came onto a public bus you were on, you'd be scared. You'd think he has a bomb in his bag. You'd think he's going to blow up the bus in the name of Allah.

And that's the problem we have here. The actions of a few are affecting your view of a specific group. You begin to think that every single one of them must be the same way. Now I'm tired of repeating myself.

By the way, I'm not a Muslim. I'm actually an agnostic Chinese Canadian.

Dirt013

so, Pearl Harbor was a terrorist attack?


How is this wrong? They WERE Muslim and of Middle Eastern decent! He clearly states that that doesn't mean he considers ALL Muslims evil terrorists, but why deny the facts?

In response to Keres (nice to see you pick and choose):

1979
Nov. 4, Tehran, Iran: Iranian radical students seized the U.S. embassy, taking 66 hostages.

1982–1991
Lebanon: Thirty US and other Western hostages kidnapped in Lebanon by Hezbollah.

1983
Beirut, Lebanon: U.S. embassy destroyed in suicide car-bomb attack; 63 dead, including 17 Americans. The Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility.

Beirut, Lebanon: Shiite suicide bombers exploded truck near U.S. military barracks at Beirut airport, killing 241 Marines.

Kuwait City, Kuwait Shiite truck bombers attacked the U.S. embassy and other targets, killing 5 and injuring 80.

1984
Sept. 20, east Beirut, Lebanon: truck bomb exploded outside the U.S. embassy annex, killing 24, including 2 U.S. military.

Beirut, Lebanon: Kuwait Airways Flight 221, from Kuwait to Pakistan, hijacked and diverted to Tehran. Two Americans killed.

1985
Beirut, Lebanon: TWA flight 847 en route from Athens to Rome hijacked to Beirut by Hezbollah terrorists and held for 17 days. A U.S. Navy diver executed.

1986
West Berlin, Germany: Libyans bombed a disco frequented by U.S. servicemen, killing 2 and injuring hundreds

1993
New York City: bomb exploded in basement garage of World Trade , killing 6 and injuring at least 1,040 others. Al-Qaeda involvement is suspected.

1995
Riyadh, Saudi Arabia: car bomb exploded at U.S. military headquarters, killing five U.S. military servicemen.

1996
Dhahran, Saudi Arabia: truck bomb exploded outside Khobar Towers military complex, killing 19 American servicemen and injuring hundreds of others.

1998
Aug. 7, Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania: truck bombs exploded almost simultaneously near 2 U.S. embassies, killing 224 and injuring about 4,500. Four men connected with al-Qaeda two of whom had received training at al-Qaeda camps inside Afghanistan, were convicted of the killings in May 2001.

2000
Oct. 12, Aden, Yemen: U.S. Navy destroyer USS Cole heavily damaged when a small boat loaded with explosives blew up alongside it. Seventeen sailors killed. Linked to Osama bin Laden, or members of al-Qaeda terrorist network.

ALL attacks carried out against the United States, ALL related to Muslim extremists.

Ok, so NOT all Muslims are terrorists, in fact an EXTREMELY SMALL minority are, but that doesn't change the fact that the people who carried out the attacks listed above were both Muslim and of Middle Eastern decent.

we aren't talking about rounding people up and putting them in camps, we're talking about a freaking t-shirt. Just who are we afraid of offending? the Muslims in this Country that aren't terrorists? does this shirt Really offend these people? If a Muslim wore a shirt that said Heathen on it...i wouldn't get nearly as worked up as half the posts on this thread....actually, i wouldn't care at all.

i guess i'm Crass...but Political Correctness is a sham.

Dirt013

Keres

I was just picking out specific times when America was attacked by non-Muslim groups. I wasn't picking and choosing, I had a specific goal that I set out to accomplish. If my goal was to find when an Islamic extremist group attacked, I would've posted those. Besides, I posted in response to what I read Cing say which was "How can it be irrelevant when everyone that has attacked us has been of a particular race and religion? Even if it's simply correlation and not causation, it's still relevant." Not everyone who has attacked us has been of a specific race and religion.

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Zephyr: Besides Wyzcrak and his godly voice; the kind of voice that you will expect to say "Zephyr, I need you to build an ark at Marine Start, with room for two of every structure so that I may turret spam for 40 days and 40 nights" that is.

Squeak:Sometimes I'm awed by zibs genius. Then I remember he's Canadian and I feel significantly less threatened.

improbablecause

For me, it isn't even about the stupid t-shirt. It's about how discrimination has become so invisible to everybody. The t-shirt and the responses here prove that point.

Dirt013

i might...does that make me prejudice? perhaps, but it's a conditioned responce. still...i'm not going to try to run a Middle Eastern family out of my neighborhood...i wouldn't tell my kids not to play in their yard....i wouldn't HATE them because of their ethnicity or religious beliefs.

Dirt013

You're right Keres....my apologies.

improbablecause

It's the media. It always seems to be the media's fault. I won't lie, I'd have the same response as well. Every outlet seems to want to pound the idea of who the "enemy" is to it's viewers/readers. We take all that information in and eat it all up without thinking twice.

I've felt this sort of discrimination myself not too long ago. During the SARS crisis in Toronto, all the news providers made certain people knew where SARS came from... China.

Toronto and it's surrounding areas are known to be incredibly multi-cultural -- racism is nearly non-existent (I say nearly because I doubt it will truly ever be gone). Heck, Toronto is considered the most ethnically and culturally diverse city in the world! And then it was reported that SARS came originally from China.

I take public transportation to get to my university and, let me tell you, the stares I got made me incredibly uneasy. If I coughed just once, I could see people shifting in their seats. I could see people wanting to get out of there as fast as they could. People avoided me. Acquintances of mine would go about insulting Chinese people around me, stating how they have SARS. Then they look over at me and say: "But not you, Jay!" It was surreal watching people who I thought were not prejudicial saying these things. If it can happen in Toronto, I can't imagine how bad it would be in other areas...

I had to go through all that because a few people contracted it in China and brought it back to Canada with them. Was I anywhere near China and do I have SARS? Of course not, but that didn't matter because I'm Chinese.

Sometimes I feel like all humans have an auto-stereotype mode or something. It takes a tiny bit of data and starts working. It's so important to recognize that (whether my auto-stereotype mode is real or not) we do have misconceptions and overgeneralize a lot. We are all guilty of it at one point or another. But just using our brains though, we can go a long way in stopping stuff like this from happening.

DudeMan

OK HERE is where your argument i think falls flat on its face. when i walk down the street at night, (and im talking about Newham London) i will be warey of the congregation of teenagers, i will think they could possibly be intoxicated. i will be warey of especialy a congregation of Black youths. why, because congregations of teenagers, especially black boys, are at the heart of most anti social behavior. in my area.... to which the police cheif released figures, that most crime in the city is commited by black boys... and people argued your exact points then.... i dont see the logic... if most crime is committed by a certain race creed gender whatever it shouldnt be wrong to say so...

so similarily, in a city that has over 1 million of the 1.5 billion muslims in it, i am still going to be looking for a muslim carrying a big bag. its common sense, our enemies who attack us now, are islamic, whether they skew the beliefs or not, they are still islamic. they will be middleastern men, and they would be carrying a bag. why does it make me a racist to look out for the types of guys we KNOW are committing these crimes.

im sorry but i am from Irish decent, and i have had an sa80 shoved in my face whilst on holiday in Ireland because i had UK plates on my car.... i dont blaim the soldier for doing it, because i was the steriotype of the day.

you cannot blaim anyone for looking directly at the people who match the description of the bombers, as long as they are not beaten up killed etc etc...

i do understand what you are saying about the islamic religion being skewed by the bombers, but it is still not wrong to call the bomber muslim, you disagree with them, they disagree with you... but i think you are underestimating hoe many muslims sympathise with the more extremis views.

if there were so few, and the moderate guys were so many, there would not be enouygh to coordinate sooo many attacks... the math simply would not work. i by no means condem all muslims, and noone, i repeat noone here has said that so far.

__________________


The Queen
"Those who perpetrate these brutal acts against innocent people should know that they will not change our way of life,"
Atrocities such as these simply reinforce our sense of community

TheFeniX
"Guns don't kill people: effeminate men in green tunics do"

improbablecause

Ah, I discussed this in an earlier post. I feel it's "wrong to say so" because it doesn't get at the core of the real issues. Skin colour has nothing to do with their criminality, and people who say it does disgust me. Perhaps it's a lack of education. Perhaps it's poverty. Perhaps it's because the discrimination against them causes them to turn to crime (a self-fulfilling prophecy, if you will).

Of course it seems like everything is due to their skin colour... when it's the only thing you've ever believed to be the cause.

What was that experience like for you? I'm guessing horrible -- something you never want to happen again.

Guess what? Muslims face that kind of discrimination every single day of their lives. Perhaps not at the level of a gun pointed at them, however (though one could argue physical violence against Muslims could be equivalent). They get the stares, the unnecessary searches, the insults, the segregation, the exclusion... all this because they just happen to the Muslim. Nobody wants to be hounded this way on a daily basis. Yet so many people are saying it's fine and that it isn't a problem. It saddens me.

I find that comment incredibly depressing. Depressing because that's how a lot of people feel. A question for you: how much contact have you had with Muslims?

How many attacks have there been? How hard is it to make a few home-made bombs, stuff them into a car, and detonate it some place? Do you really need hundreds of millions of people to terrorize with? You are truly reaching for a justification for discrimination when you stated the above. (Oh and, again for the I-forget-how-manyth-time, you don't need to say all Muslims are terrorists to make it so. The implication is there. Read previous posts.)

But lets say, for argument's sake, that there are a million of these radicals. Now lets bring back that infamous 1.5 billion number... divide 1 million by 1.5 billion and you get 0.0006 or 0.06%. Not very staggering, is it? How about 5 million? 1.5 billion / 5 million = 0.003 or 0.3%. Still not very staggering. How about 30 million (however highly unlikely this is)? 1.5 billion / 30 million = 0.02 or 2%.

I'll leave it at that and let you absorb these numbers yourself.

=DdogG=

there are over 2 billion Christians in the world, and 35000 new ones every day.....

I dont see a lot of news about coordinated and strictly planned attacks killing thousands because Jesus said the Pakistani's were vile, evil infidels.

sorry, but this argument is bogus.

Islamic extremists despise the United states and have made it ok and a good thing to kill Americans.

Christian extremists protest abortion clinics, and while they do kill people with bombs and whatnot, they are not attacking other countries and ethnicities, they are attacking a POLITICAL stigma that still separates a lot of individuals here.... no one is blowing up abortion clinics in Afganistan (fill in your own joke about why here)....

I dont know of any other "Jesus told me to" kinda stories that happen more than once or twice a decade... and I don't know the last time I heard of this happening.... 96?

My point is, the religion DOES breed the hatred of Christianity, capitalism, freedom, democracy, and just about any other "Western" thought".....

and he was a black, American born Muslim. He talked a whole lot about peace and freedom... but when those didn't work for him... he changed his tune... This was from a LEADER in the religion and I would say a very mainstream look into the religion. A little on the extremist side, but pretty close to center mass......

In contrast, Billy Graham is pretty much Center mass for Christians..... BIG difference in militant attitudes.......

I think the biggest point is that this religion is the biggest threat to the free world.... It is the only organization with training camps, schools, education, and vast networks and resourced designed for and dedicated to, destruction, violence, terror, and intimidation. Hinduism or Buddism dont have these, Jews dont do this, Christians dont teach it, Catholics arent killing thousands.... even Satanists are benign in this area.

Not all Muslims are Middle-Eastern, not all Middle-easterners are Muslim. But history has proven that the ones organizing the biggest and most lethal attacks are the full mideast garb wearing, full beard, olive skinned, male AK-47 toting stereotyped muslin that is being discussed here.

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Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former. -Albert Einstein
The two most common elements in the universe are Hydrogen and stupidity. -Harlan Ellison

If all else fails: "rm -rf /"

Edwin

This thread has gone on long enough way off topic. Could we get this locked? If you guys really want to argue start a new thread with that as the topic. Otherwise just point and laugh at the shirt.

=DdogG=

^^^ HAHAHAHA!!!!! I want one.....

Better? (I think the shirt is funny..... not so much the religious ones... but the Infidel is funny.....)

and yes, I am the one being "belittled" by the term, and by wearing that shirt, it spits in the face of those who call me that..... thus making the term a source of strength and defiance for me, not subjugation and humiliation.

__________________
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former. -Albert Einstein
The two most common elements in the universe are Hydrogen and stupidity. -Harlan Ellison

If all else fails: "rm -rf /"