The most evil

[sincerely_helene]

What a melancholy thread.

Just a reminder: the USA and their little poodle Britain declared war on Iraq, not the other way round. Saddam Hussein, an evil man, practised Islam erratically, when it suited him, and was not respected by most Muslims in the world.

Two leading Muslims from Britain have just flown to Iraq, probably hopelessly, to emphasise that most British Muslims are against kidnapping and violence, and thus to try and secure the British hostage's release.

For long periods of history - for instance, in the period the crusades, when Christian popes destroyed much of the knowledge left to us by Greeks and Romans - it was Muslims (and a few renegade Irish monks) who kept safe precious documents, and advanced knowledge, and preserved civilisation.

I say this as an atheist, someone personally against Islam as a philosophy, but a respecter of the truth, horrified by the profound prejudice that begins this thread.

patrick

Yer weird!

 

[oggbashan]

Ban Al-Gebra!

Al-Gebra and Zero are Muslim inventions.

They must be banned before they spread terror throughout the world.

Zero tolerance for Al-Gebra. 'x' marks the spot where it has been.

Og

 

[rgraham666]

Ha! Good one Ogg!

 

[flaming]

Yer weird!

Random comments with nothing to back them don't make you look any less weird. Expressing opinion whether it be pro or against, or just in a different light is what discuessions are for. Discarding anyones opinion as weird is in my opinion closed minded.

F

 

[gauchecritic]

Random comments with nothing to back them don't make you look any less weird. Expressing opinion whether it be pro or against, or just in a different light is what discuessions are for. Discarding anyones opinion as weird is in my opinion closed minded.

F

Gauche

 

[dr_mabeuse]

Re: Ban Al-Gebra!

Al-Gebra and Zero are Muslim inventions.

They must be banned before they spread terror throughout the world.

Zero tolerance for Al-Gebra. 'x' marks the spot where it has been.

Og

Al-cohol and al-chemy as well.

It was Moorish alchemists who discovered distillation (using an instrument called an alembic) and first distilled alcohol from wine to make brandy and aqua vit.

Moorish Spain was the bright spot of Europe until Ferdinand and Isabella expelled the Jews and Arabs in 1492.

---dr.M.

 

[cantdog]

I think everyone should re read Box's comment and consider it. Especially those who were quick to condemn it. Not because it should be accepted or lauded, but because I think it represents a substantial portion of the people in the U.S.

I don't have to come here to hear it. It's rampant down at the bodega. It's alive and well at right aide and at the grand union. I can see it in action by walking to Thayer gate, where the MP's practice racial profiling unabashedly. I can hear it repeated in much less civil terms at the VFW back home. Even on Campus when I visit my brothers.

With every innocent blown up on a bus in Jerusalem, every poor hostage beheaded on the web, every child who died in Russia, the sentiment quietly grows, takes shape and invades more minds. With each atrocity it moves from a vague thought, to a red hot ember of anger to a rock solid fact in people's minds.

Box girded his loins, prepared for the slings and arrows and stated what a lot of americans feel, wether they proclaim it loudly from the pulpit or just believe it quietly. And it grows. Every day it grows as the barbarity of terrorists sinks to new lows to garner the shock effect they crave. With every press conference where the government fosters the idea that Arab, Muslim, terrorist are all the same word.

Here the person who voiced it has been chided, the majority here reject the notion you can characterize a religion by the acts of a few adherents. Here it's easy to take a stand against it because it's annonyamous and you will be in the majority. But here on the streets of this town, or my home town, or the town my grandfather lived in, or the campus, it isn't shouted down anymore. People quietly accept it at worst or fail to conftont it at best and it grows.

This is a scared country, and the portion of the population most terrified is the muslim population. They catch the fall out from it. They undergo the descrimination of it. They suffer greatly for their religion.

I don't condemn box for this sentiment. His post dosen't make me angry or sad. It frightens me, because I don't think he's on the lunatic fringe, I don't even think he is in the minority. Until muslims the world over stand up and with a unified voice say these people aren't us and we are not them, it will grow.

This kind of pervasive, if unspoken latent hatred for a class of people existed in Germany after World War I. It took only a few anti-semites, without even the excuse of 9/11 or web broadcast beheadings to fan that latant hate into fire. Krystalnacht is just waiting to happen here. It will take only the right act of barbarity and the right leader and it will explode with the same horrible outcome.

Look at his post again. Substitute Jew for Muslim. If that dosen't cause you to shiver, I don't know what will. Focused anger, for a specific act, diffused to cover a broad class of people. There is precedent for it and that precedent is chilling.

A long runing question about World War II has been how much the average German knew and how could normal people become such monsters. I wonder if we are not close to answering that question, when our own Krystalnacht and concentration camps spring up.

-Colly

Thank you. You're the best, Colly.

 

[sincerely_helene]

Gauche

I'm with you on that, Gauche.

 

[Boxlicker101]

I thought it would be fun to start this thread just to see how much hostility it would produce. Interestingly enough, at first it produced leg-kick reactions from Perdita and others of “You suck!” or words to that effect, and later there was more reasoned discourse.

After reading some posts, I went back to make sure that I had actually said what I remembered saying, because some persons apparently read some things that weren’t written there. For instance, I never said that all Muslims are evil. What I said was: “That's not to say that all Muslims are evil, because they aren't. It is not to say that only Muslims are evil because there are also evil Christians and evil Atheists, and any other kind of believer or non-believer but, if you could somehow quantify the level of evil of everybody in the world, on a scale of one to 100, the average of Muslims would be higher than that of any other group.” Of course, such a quantification would be impossible.

I completely agree with Lou and probably everybody else here that a vast majority of Muslims, just like a vast majority of every group of people, just want to live in peace and freedom from fear, want, etc. I believe that most persons in the world, regardless of their religious convictions or lack of same, have more in common with each other that any of them have with extremists of any religion. An average Muslim man of my age has more in common with me than he has with Usama Bin Laden. I can’t prove that, of course, but it seems like a reasonable assumption, and most of the persons who have posted here seem to agree.

Having made those statements, however, I still stand on what I said. The Muslim lunatic fringe seems to be wider than most lunatic fringes and it even includes respected members of the clergy. When I said: “Average Muslims in the street encourage the terrorism of their co-religionists,” I was referring to the Palestinians who cheered when they heard of the attacks on the WTC, or when they learn about suicide bombers. I find it rather gratifying that nobody has said anything to refute my mention of The Taliban, the government of the Sudan or most of the others I mentioned.

I read the statement by Yusuf Islam. I find it interesting that he espouses the suppression of dissent, and that he believes that persons who commit what he calls “blasphemy” should be put to death. Does anybody on this forum share his opinion?

This is something that Pure said: “Same holds for any Iraqi who's lost relatives, in the 'freeing' of Iraq. He makes a roadside bomb which kills Americans in a passing vehicle. Again, vengeful, intemperate (maybe) but expectable.... so why 'evil'?”

Such a person would be a partisan, battling an invading army, not a terrorist. As I said in my original post, I would not consider such a person to be evil but if the bomb were placed in a market in order to kill or maim as many of that person’s countrymen as possible, then yes, that person could be considered to be evil.

Colly said: “Look at his post again. Substitute Jew for Muslim. If that dosen't cause you to shiver, I don't know what will. Focused anger, for a specific act, diffused to cover a broad class of people. There is precedent for it and that precedent is chilling.”

I would never have written that post substituting “Jew” for “Muslim”. It was not Jews who murdered the children in Russia, destroyed the WTC, are the genocidal government of The Sudan, formed the Taliban, or did any of the other things I mentioned. If it were, then I might write a similar post about them.

A few posters have had the temerity to compare the relocation camps for Japanese, Italian and German persons during World War Two with the Nazi death camps. For the sake of discussion, we can call them all concentration camps, because they were intended to concentrate certain groups in specific places but that is the only thing they had in common. The purpose of the death camps was extermination. The purpose of the relocation centers was to prevent the inhabitants from committing espionage and they were released when the war ended. This is not to defend the actions of the US government because it was a disgraceful episode, but it is to put the two "concentration camps" in perspective.

A few persons have made references to Guantanamo Naval Base. During WW2, the US captured enemy soldiers and placed them in POW camps. Some were later repatriated because of injuries and some were exchanged for Allied soldiers being held prisoner, but others remained captives until the end of the war. The US and our allies captured enemy soldiers in Afghanistan and they are now being held prisoner. The war is not over and it would be incredibly stupid to release them so they can return to their native countries, then go back to Afghanistan and resume fighting against us. Personally, I believe they are being treated much more humanely than they treated their victims, especially the women of Afghanistan.

That’s all I am going to say for now but I will add more after I have read some more comments by others.

 

[poohlive]

I think, if anyone is evil, it would be us. Well, not all of us, Americans, that is, but rather, a higher than average percentage of us are evil, and thus do evil things.

We don't kill people, per say. We don't cause them to die, but rather, our evil is more subtle, and like good evil, it's usually based on good intentions.

As Americans, you need to go back to what founded this country. We decided our voice wasn't being heard in the world. So, we told Britian to fuck off. Well, the king wouldn't have that. He called out his armies, and sent them over here, planning on taking the colonies back.

What did we do? We fought... but how did we fight? We fought a war the way no war had been fought before. The british armies stood out in lines in the middle of fields, with huge red coats, marching loud and proud. Our people, rather, were in the bushes, hiding, taking cover, shooting from the trees and shrubs and inconspicuous places.

We fought, cause our freedom was being taken away from us. We fought, cause we had no choice. If we didn't fight, if we didn't stand up, our voice would never have been heard.

It wasn't supposed to happen. We weren't supposed to win. The British outnumbered us at least three to one. But we did win. We defeated all the odds, the obstacles, the barriers. We broke new ground, and became a country of freedom.

But, what if that didn't happen? What if, the British wised their asses up on a couple of those battles, and started wearing camouflage uniforms, and used guerilla tactics, and planned and strategized to account for the new way the americans were fighting. Well, they would have won the war, and they would have taken their land back.

What else could we have done? Just go back to being oppressed and voiceless... just drop this illusion of freedom and make sure that Britian still has their little money making colonies? No, we would have rebelled. We would have stood up, and used more desperate measures to get our voice heard.

Instead of just dumping tea into the Boston Harbour, we would have taken down a ship. Instead of shooting a few redcoats from the bushes, we would have slit their throats while they slept.

Does that make us evil? If you want to put it down as that, then ok... but history is told from the winners, not the losers. All over, in history class, american children are learning that those brave rebels fought for the american way, and for freedom. They were proud, and should be looked up to.

(I don't know how the british feel about this, it's been a while ago, but still, it'd be interesting to find out)

I think a lot of the Muslim world is going through the same turmoil right now. They are being bombarded with all of this shit from the modern world. America who backs Israeli's that go out and purposely take Muslim land and kill Muslim rebels, who only want the same basic freedoms that George Washington and Ben Franklin fought over.

Muslims are the evil ones? You don't think it's the United States, who forces them to do things our way. Who shoves our values and our ideals down their throat, forcing them to obey... just as the Empire did almost 300 years ago to us?

We give aid to the wrong people, we give weapons to those who blatantly kill civilians and rise themselves as a dictator. The war on Iraq right now is bloody and horrible, but it didn't have to be. Half of the weapons being shot back at us are ones we gave them not 15 years ago. Half of the ones who kill us, have families of their own already dead.

Muslims, are just trying to get their voice heard.... because there are people, high and mighty, like all of us, who believe that Muslims are evil, and they don't deserve their own intepretation of freedom and liberty.

There's not a single bombing that happens because a Muslim felt like killing innocent lives. There isn't a single gun fired by a Muslim who didn't bury a dead relative of his own. There isn't a single recruit in Al Quaeda who hasn't seen the demoralization of American Society pouring onto their streets, and thought, "something has to be done about this... not in my city, not in my family."

You want to say they are just evil, and end it on that. You want to categorize their actions as monstrous and vile, and just move onto the next subject, well, that's your perogative. Just remember, it's hundreds of people like you, who have political power and pull, that are making the Muslim world lash out like this in the first place.

I say, if we want to do anything, we need to find out the cause, not deal with the effect.

 

[oggbashan]

(I don't know how the british feel about this, it's been a while ago, but still, it'd be interesting to find out)

At the time, many people in the UK government were against the war and wanted to give the American Colonies limited independence. The 'King's Party' were using the issue to try to get power back for the King IN THE UK and the issue of taxation and representation in the Colonies was a tool.

Things changed once the war started and the Colonies allied themselves with our ancient enemy France. At the time it seemed to us as it would seem to you now if Texas were to declare independence from the US, start a war and ally itself to Al-Queda.

Atrocities were committed on both sides. Both sides used Native Americans and encouraged them to behave with savagery. The result: Native Amercians were slaughtered by both sides and we know what happened to the Native Americans of the Eastern States. Where are they now?

Those in the Colonies who supported the UK, and there were many of them, were dispossessed and exiled mainly to Canada - an 18th century form of ethnic cleansing.

The Colonies nearly lost. If the British had been better commanded the War of Independence would have been a failure.

Neither side has much to be proud of in the conduct of that war. It could have been avoided if politicians in the UK weren't trying to change our constitution and push democracy here back 200 years.

Without one man - Washington who continued to keep an army in being at Valley Forge and fight at his own expense when the US Government wouldn't pay him or his troops - and the help of France, the US would have lost and we too would have paid a heavy price in loss of freedoms here.

Those here, who understood the issues, didn't want the UK to win. The King had to send troops from his lands in Germany because some UK troops were unwilling to fight their brothers.

It was a very close run thing. US history tends to glorify the war. In truth neither side should be proud of all of it.

Og

 

[patrick1]

How odd that a moralist would think 'it would be fun to start this thread just to see how much hostility it would produce'. That in itself seems a strange morality.

On Guantanamo Bay: Box suggests 'we' are treating 'them' better than they treated others. In terms either of morality, or more narrowly, in terms of internationally-agreed criteria for how to treat prisoners, relativity is irrelevant. You do right, or you do wrong. To torture people is wrong. To hold them without access to legal representation is to undermine your own case, every time you, an American or a Briton, subsequently criticise an authoritarian regime for doing the same. I can't see that prisoners in the Second World War, who were much better treated by the Allies than the prisoners in Guantanamo Bay, have any relevance.

p

 

[Boxlicker101]

How odd that a moralist would think 'it would be fun to start this thread just to see how much hostility it would produce'. That in itself seems a strange morality.

On Guantanamo Bay: Box suggests 'we' are treating 'them' better than they treated others. In terms either of morality, or more narrowly, in terms of internationally-agreed criteria for how to treat prisoners, relativity is irrelevant. You do right, or you do wrong. To torture people is wrong. To hold them without access to legal representation is to undermine your own case, every time you, an American or a Briton, subsequently criticise an authoritarian regime for doing the same. I can't see that prisoners in the Second World War, who were much better treated by the Allies than the prisoners in Guantanamo Bay, have any relevance.

p

I have been called many things in my life, some of them highly uncomplimentary, but I don't believe I have ever been called a moralist before. I don't like it at all. Moralists are persons who take it upon themselves to tell other persons what to think and what not to think, what to do and what not to do, whom to fuck and whom not to fuck. The only thing I tell people to do is to read my smut, and that is just a suggestion.

The Taliban is certainly not a party to the Geneva Convention. I don't know if the previous government of Afghanistan was or not but, one way or another, the prisoners on Gitmo probably have more comfortable surroundings than they had before they were captured, and they are much better off than their victims were. In this case I am not referring to WTC; I am referring to the citizens of Afghanistan.

The relevance of Axis soldiers is that they. like the Taliban, were POW's, and they should be held until the fighting is over, like the Axis POW's were. Some of the Taliban probably committed criminal acts but that remains to be seen. After it has been sorted out, they can be returned to Afghanistan for punishment, or to their home nations but until that time, they are where they belong.

I am puzzled by the reference to "legal representation". They should be allowed access to The Red Crescent or similar organizations but they are not usually charged with any crimes yet so what would a legal representative do for them? So far, they are just being held as POW's.

 

[oggbashan]

So far, they are just being held as POW's.

If they are, then that gives them a certain status and rights under the Geneva Convention. The objections to the treatment of those at Gitmo is that they are NOT treated as POWs and they are treated in a way that is both inconsistent and inhumane compared with normal behaviour towards belligerents.

They are held without trial and at the whim of the US. That has parallels with 18th century Letters of Cachet when unfortunate individuals were sent to jail for life for offending the King.

Og

 

[Virtual_Burlesque]

Box,

Quoting sincerely_helene in her humorous response to a comment originally posted by patrick1, “Yer weird!”


Did you stop to consider that someone might read your original post and take it as a reinforcement of their delusions, but not return to read your follow up post? You would, in that way, be adding to some delusional being’s disease.

I posted Yusuf Islam’s statement from October 26, 2001 because he has recently been refused admittance to America as a terrorist, identified as such, by that organization — DHS — which has incarcerated 5,000 people without due process for up to three years and has failed to indict a single one (not even when they broke the law to do so).

In late July, the Department of Homeland Security revoked the work visa of a prominent Swiss Islamic scholar hired by Notre Dame for an endowed chair in its International Peace Studies Institute. Tariq Ramadan is a highly respected intellectual and author of more than twenty books named by Time magazine as one of the hundred most likely innovators of the twenty-first century.

Two days after 9/11 Tariq Ramadan called upon fellow Muslims to condemn the attacks. This made Ramadan precisely the kind of moderate voice in Islam the United States should be courting to isolate Al Qaeda. Barring Ramadan from our country reinforces the sense that this Administration cannot, or will not, distinguish between moderates and extremists and is simply — like you — anti-Muslim.

With enough fearmongering, that attitude might win the election, but it will lose the war. The Bush Administration is playing into Al Qaeda's hands by further alienating those we need most to be on our side.

As a pacifist, I don’t agree with all of Yusuf Islam’s statement, but I find it closer to what I believe than either the statements or the actions of our president.

You began your screed strongly: I have to say that I believe that Muslims are the most evil persons in the world.

I notice that you used the approved Bush Administration terminology. What we do, dropping explosives from thirty thousand feet upon communications complexes, civilian houses and apartments, men, women, and children — civilians all — in their sleep is brave, the work of liberators. What they do, approaching close with explosives wrapped around their body, or in their vehicle, so that they can detonate themselves and thus take some of those whom they perceive as their enemy, with them, is cowardly and evil. I might suggest that the former is more accuratedly described as calculated while the later is closer to a desperate act.

I have little expectation of being able to change your prejudices, but I should like you to look up the definition of the words you are employing, and find some that are more appropriate.



Further, I should like to suggest that you find better methods of relieving you personal ennui than by conducting such “experiments,” foisting unsound, unscientific, and unpalatable opinion onto people to whom you profess friendship, for the fun of getting a rise.

I quit running head games on my friends when I was seventeen. Grow up!

 

[Guest]

VB: very well said, thank you.

"I have to say that I believe that Muslims are the most evil persons in the world." - I daresay, Box, that sentence is enough for Patrick or anyone else to feel free to call you a moralist. As for your ridiculously tardy explanation I am

unapologetically, Perdita

 

[Boxlicker101]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't that uprising only hit the fan for real when said Israel decided that what was granted them was not enough, and that they needed the added lebensraum of Sinai, Golan the West Bank and Gaza?
#L

The surrounding Arab nations attacked the new state of Israel immediately after its founding. The attack was beaten back and the Israelis solidified their new nation. After that, there were a successkion of attacks, always unsuccessful, and territories were taken from the aggressor nations, which is a normal result of starting a war and losing. This gave Israel buffers against those who had sworn to destroy them, as well as additional land.

 

[poohlive]

Yes, and whose backing Isreal so they can win all these wars? Who is spending literally billions of dollars in aid, weapons, and such so that Isreal can stop all of this? America.

Our schools are a joke, we're three trillion in debt, social security is about to be lost, no nationwide medicare, millions of people out of work...

But Isreal gets their brand new tanks every year.

Face it, Muslims in Isreal are the modern day native americans. Remember? Napolean sold us land that didn't belong to him, and we settled it, pushing all the native americans on smaller and smaller pieces of land. Of course, the native americans were nice, and kind, and didn't put up a big fuss... except for maybe a few isolated incidents.

Could you imagine if they knew just what we were doing to them? If someone told them that we were taking their land, nothing they could do about it? If they had the means to stop it, would they?

Well, Muslims at the Gaza Strip and West Bank do have the means, and they're not giving up without a fight. No matter how much money and aid we give Isreal. You can't break people's spirit...

You can break their neck, but not their spirit.

 

[Boxlicker101]

VB: very well said, thank you.

"I have to say that I believe that Muslims are the most evil persons in the world." - I daresay, Box, that sentence is enough for Patrick or anyone else to feel free to call you a moralist. As for your ridiculously tardy explanation I am

unapologetically, Perdita

I don't like being called a moralist because I don't see myself telling other prsons what is wrong or right, believing people should be able to do their own thing. However, if asked, I would say that it is wrong to hijack airplanes full of people and crash them into buildings that are also full of people. I would say it is wrong to take over schools full of children and blow up the schools, trying to kill as many as possible. I also think it is wrong to blow up commute trains or night clubs full of people. If thinking that way makes me a moralist, then I guess I am one but so is practically everybody in the world.

Everybody, from Mother Teresa to Adolph Hitler has or had a certain level of evil in their natures. On a scale of one to 100 the average would be 50. If it were somehow possible to average the level of evil for all large groups, that of Muslims would be higher than any other large groups because of so many of them doing so many evil things, which we all know about, so I won't enumerate them any more. I am well aware that these evil deeds are being done by a lunatic fringe but, as I said earlier, their lunatic fringe seems to be wider than most. Even so, a very vast majority of Muslims are not much different than me, except that most of them don't write dirty stories.

If I could somehow be transported back to the early 1930's, I would probably make that evaluation of Japanese because of the atrocities they were committing in China. In the early 1940's, it would have been Germans for the same kind of reason. In the first half of the 19th century, it would have been white Americans because of slavery and their treatment of Native Americans. In the 16th and 17th centuries, it would have been European Christians because of their conquests and pogroms and inquisitions. At other times it would have been other groups of people but, right now, it is Muslims.In the next decade, it might be Americans; who knows?

Although many persons have chided me for making such outrageous statements, nobody has said "No they're not. It's (some other group)".

 

[Boxlicker101]

Terrorists who are so-called 'Muslims' have a long way to go to surpass the killers of the 20th Century.

"Evil" ones - Hitler, Chairman Mao and Stalin in ascending order of the number of victims.

"Good" ones - Winston Churchill and the US wartime presidents.

All 5/6 count their victims in millions.

None were remotely 'Muslim'.

The Influenza epidemic of 1919 probably killed more than Stalin did. Was that an 'Act of God'? Whose God?

Og

I'm a little surprised that Kaiser Wilhelm and Tojo or his predecessors weren't on that list.

 

[cantdog]

I'm a little surprised that Kaiser Wilhelm and Tojo or his predecessors weren't on that list.

Yeah, those slimy muslim bastards. And Pol Pot! Another muslim, right?

You make me tired, pard.

 

[minsue]

Wow. How the fuck have I missed this thread?

I'm too tired to read the whole thing and I'd say it's extraordinarily likely that I'll just end up pissed off anyway. Based on the first paragraph, I take it we've moved from 'my god is better than your god' to 'your god is more evil than my god'?

 

[cloudy]

Wow. How the fuck have I missed this thread?

I'm too tired to read the whole thing and I'd say it's extraordinarily likely that I'll just end up pissed off anyway. Based on the first paragraph, I take it we've moved from 'my god is better than your god' to 'your god is more evil than my god'?

I'm sorry, Min, but the contrast between your post and your AV just struck me funny.

 

[minsue]

I'm sorry, Min, but the contrast between your post and your AV just struck me funny.

ROFL

Shit, I just changed it & had forgotten when I posted.

Yeah, I'm goin to hell for it.

 

[Lucifer_Carroll]

Wow. How the fuck have I missed this thread?

I'm too tired to read the whole thing and I'd say it's extraordinarily likely that I'll just end up pissed off anyway. Based on the first paragraph, I take it we've moved from 'my god is better than your god' to 'your god is more evil than my god'?

Moral relativism is the new "in" philosophy this year. It goes well with any atrocities.