Angry Muslims!

[Siamanto]

Re: Angry Muslims!

Even the ones who pretend to be nonmilitant ask Osama to blow up Denmark!!

It's like the answer to everything is violence ...

You don't like what they say about your culture? Go bomb the hell out of innocent ppl who have nothing to do with the cartoons creation.

I totally agree with you and I'm no fan of Muslims, actually I keep myself within a comfortable distance; but, do you think that the Afghans and the Iraqis may have the same perception of the West, specially Anglo-Saxons? I believe that they do and for obvious reasons.
Also, please consider how "facts" are presented to you and how they are presented to them?

I wonder ... if militant Muslims could actually realize how few Americans actually vote and what they could infer from that statistic, if they would still feel they way they do in regards to stereotyping all the people and our ideas as a singular collective and cohesive amoeba

Don't you think that the above is also true of Afghanistan, Iraq and...?
Also, what percentage of Muslims did actually demonstrate or did get involved in violent activities?

[Anonymouse]

Re: Angry Muslims!

Sometimes I think it's only internet forums where you do anything on because reading some of your threads it would appear reality is all too elusive.

It appears making sense is not the best of your abilities. Maybe just hitting the 'submit' button is enough for most folks.

[ace]

Re: Angry Muslims!

Lol.

"Danish Newspapers mocks Allah. WE MUST WIPE DENMARK OFF THE FACE OF THE EARTH."

Cartoons like those appear in newspapers all the time. Why not scream "DEATH TO AMERICA!?"

O wait...nevermind.

[Sip]

Re: Angry Muslims!

Jesus still loves them.

[Կարմիր Բ]

Re: Angry Muslims!

It appears making sense is not the best of your abilities. Maybe just hitting the 'submit' button is enough for most folks.

Not everyone has been illuminated from the doctrine of esoteric knowledge concerning God my young follower of Kabbalah.

[Anonymouse]

Re: Angry Muslims!

Not everyone has been illuminated from the doctrine of esoteric knowledge concerning God my young follower of Kabbalah.

I suppose your two seconds of shining glory by using a complex sentence on an internet forum were just used up. It almost mirrors the chimp’s capacity for critical thought.

[karoaper]

Re: Angry Muslims!

I have a feeling that the force and intensity of the angry protests have very little to do with the caricatures themselves.

The people in these lands live under autocratic rule with very little if any ability to vent against the rulers. Funny that the ones screaming the loudest live in the most freedom of speech oppresed countries. The ones in US didn't get too riled up. Maybe because they don't have that much pent up anger.

So, they can't vent out at their own governments, who deep in their hearts they really wish they could vent against, and then comes the chance to get all that energy out in pre-approved protests. The floodgates are broken.

[Anonymouse]

Re: Angry Muslims!

Democracy Not an Export Item

by Leon Hadar

The irrational response to the Danish cartoons shows that the Middle East may not be fit for democracy after all.

In a new film, Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World, comedian Albert Brooks is dispatched to south Asia by humorless Bush administration officials to look for, well, comedy in the Muslim world.

Trying to cope with the depressing reality of a post-September 11 world in which Americans now occupy some parts of an angry anti-American Muslim universe, the gloomy bureaucrats in Washington hope a xxxish comic from Hollywood will help them discover what makes Muslims laugh.

After all, laughter is a universal trait, and if we Westerners laugh, the Muslims will probably laugh with us. And who knows? This could be a form of Preventive Comedic Diplomacy: A laugh a day in Baghdad, Kabul and Tehran could keep the US military away.

Unfortunately, Brooks's mission of making the Muslim world safe for comedy proves to be a sad joke. As with most of his liberal Hollywood colleagues, Brooks believes that all cultures can be brought together by shared commitment to universal values. But these fellows in India and Pakistan just don't get his sarcastic and self-deprecating sense of humor, not to mention the double entendres and sexual innuendoes.

His Comedy Hour is a flop and he discovers to his chagrin that while Muslims do laugh "like us", their concept of what is funny is not the kind that might work for a stand-up comedian in New York, Melbourne or, for that matter, a cartoonist in Copenhagen. It's not that the 12 cartoons of the prophet Mohammed published in the small Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten were very funny; they were quite tasteless and offensive. But you could say that about much of the stuff that we find any day of the week in our Western media, including caricatures that mock Jesus, bash Catholic priests, offend xxxs and insult racial minorities.

If you don't like what you see, feel free to send angry letters to the editor, boycott and demonstrate against the offensive newspaper and ask public figures to condemn it. But in a society where freedom of expression is valued, you don't threaten the life or use violence against those who disturb your political beliefs or religious sensibilities. And that includes crude anti-fill-the-blank cartoonists.

That this kind of commitment to a free exchange of ideas and tolerance of dissent that those of us who were raised and educated in the West seem to take for granted, like the air we breathe, is not shared by many Muslims across the world, and especially those residing in the Arab Middle East, has become quite evident in a very dramatic way in recent days.

The violence perpetrated by the mobs in centers of Arab civilization, such as Beirut, Damascus and Cairo, is very disturbing and reflects an illiberal political culture that is breeding religious intolerance and anti-modern attitudes. And it is strengthening the power of radical Islamic groups, ranging from the Arab-Sunni Muslim Brotherhood to the Shia Hezbollah.

What is even more disturbing is that some of this anti-Western frenzy has exploded in places in the Arab Middle East – in the new Iraq and in Palestine – where the Bush administration has been promoting its campaign to spread freedom and where open elections were showcased by Washington as highlighting its Wilsonian agenda of making the region safe for democracy.

Indeed, members of the radical political Islamist groups elected to power during this US-produced celebration of democracy – Iraq's Shia clerics and Palestine's Hamas terrorist group – have, with rare exceptions, been serving as cheerleaders for mobs attacking Americans and Europeans, including Danish troops maintaining peace in Iraq and officers of the European Union in Gaza, which is the main source of economic assistance for the Palestinians.

But the neoconservative intellectuals who have been the driving force behind the pro-democracy campaign in the Middle East refuse to admit that, not unlike Brooks's comedy spiel, their own democracy shtick has been a policy disaster. In two strategic parts of the Middle East – the Persian Gulf and Israel/Palestine – it has led to the victory of political parties whose values run contrary to that of the US.

These groups, for instance, would reverse women's rights and give second-class citizenship to non-Muslims. And their goals – in Iraq, an alliance with Iran, and in Palestine, a refusal to recognize Israel – would harm US strategic interests, the Israeli-Palestinian peace process and hinder efforts to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.

So much for the idea that free elections give birth to liberal pro-Western governments. As policy analyst Fareed Zakaria argues, elections that take place in societies that lack the necessary institutional foundations – a functioning civil society, free markets, independent press and judiciary, religious tolerance – tend to produce an "illiberal democracy" that only exacerbates the problems of divisions and dysfunction and bring to power nationalist and religious populists who exploit their people's fears of the "other".

From that perspective, the US push for democracy in the Middle East has been a self-defeating strategy that has made the region safe for nationalism and other radical forms of ethnic, religious, and tribal movements that regard the US and its allies in the region as the source of all evil. It's difficult for American neoconservatives who fantasize about a global multicultural community committed to liberal democratic values to admit that perhaps the Muslims are not "like us" after all.

They laugh, but don't appreciate our sense of humor. They want to be free, but don't share our concept of liberal democracy, a set of values and institutions that can only develop through a long process of trial and error and in a hospitable environment. Perhaps the time has come for Washington to adopt a more realistic approach and stop looking for democracy in the Middle East while pursuing a policy that secures the real interests of the Western democracies in the region.

After all, liberal democracy, like humor, is not an export commodity. And, unlike humor, it's a very serious business.

[Titan]

Re: Angry Muslims!

There is plenty of comedy in the Muslim world. In fact, I've seen many Arab sitcoms on satellite television. Only some Muslim fundamentalists are outraged by the Danish cartoons, there are others who don't care. The media has made baseless generalizations.

[Anonymouse]

Re: Angry Muslims!

Would you expect anything more from a nose-it-all bully? His views are those of a misinformed and brainwashed American of average intelligence and exposure to other cultures and countries - despite the fact that he's born overseas; he talks no differently than the average ignorant redneck. Haven't you notice that he enjoys starting threads to post "juicy" news - or gossip - about other countries and cultures; or, simply, to make fun of a person? That seems to be an obsession.

I didn't think you'd be riled up that easily. Was it my little tid bit about the French and their addiction to menage trois?