Moderator: Moderators
Sure, how about those Christians bombing mosques?tzor wrote: If not shooting, how about BOMBING
[url=http://english.ahram.org.eg/News/3365.aspx wrote:Ahram Online[/url] {OK, Human Shields, Epiphany}]From the well-known to the unknown, Muslims had offered their bodies as “human shields” for last night’s mass, making a pledge to collectively fight the threat of Islamic militants and towards an Egypt free from sectarian strife.
“We either live together, or we die together,” was the sloganeering genius of Mohamed El-Sawy, a Muslim arts tycoon whose cultural centre distributed flyers at churches in Cairo Thursday night, and who has been credited with first floating the “human shield” idea.
Among those shields were movie stars Adel Imam and Yousra, popular Muslim televangelist and preacher Amr Khaled, the two sons of President Hosni Mubarak, and thousands of citizens who have said they consider the attack one on Egypt as a whole.
“This is not about us and them,” said Dalia Mustafa, a student who attended mass at Virgin Mary Church on Maraashly Street. “We are one. This was an attack on Egypt as a whole, and I am standing with the Copts because the only way things will change in this country is if we come together.”
In the days following the brutal attack on Saints Church in Alexandria, which left 21 dead on New Year’ eve, solidarity between Muslims and Copts has seen an unprecedented peak. Millions of Egyptians changed their Facebook profile pictures to the image of a cross within a crescent – the symbol of an “Egypt for All”. Around the city, banners went up calling for unity, and depicting mosques and churches, crosses and crescents, together as one.
Uh, no we don't.sabs wrote:The following give a special recognition to Catholicism in their constitution
Philippines
Politenewb is not me. At all. I've been busy all week going to class and hitting on women. I haven't even posted on this thread.PhoneLobster wrote:Edit: Oh look Ubernoob is spewing out even more stupidity. I missed the big blarg post. Look. I'm talking about hunters, which other people have mentioned, because your hand gun self defense argument is so stupid I didn't even BOTHER talking about it. Yes. That's right Tzor mentioning hunters was more sensible and sane than your argument. You are being dumber than Tzor.
Have you never been to a serious martial arts class? It is trivially easy to disarm someone that is smaller than you and surprised. The only hard part is not breaking their hand/finger in the process, and your supposed rapist probably isn't too concerned about that.PoliteNewb wrote:Trivially easy, huh? So you obviously know how often that happens, right? Maybe you've done it yourself a time or two?K wrote:I mean, it's trivially easy to take a handgun away from someone who is surprised. This means that you might even get more successful rapes because the victim is now being held at gunpoint with their own gun.
This. Absolutely this.K wrote:The problem is not that people want to carry a gun for defense; the problem is that they want to carry a gun to shoot someone.
I mean, if you carry a rifle, no one is going to try to rob or rape you, but if you carry a handgun they will try and then you get to shoot them. It's a power fantasy, not a matter of protection.
This sort of mix up would not be a problem if you had a sensible crustacean themed name.ubernoob wrote:Politenewb is not me.
Don't you can know? You can catch Islam from people! Just like you can catch gay and atheism and being a filthy liberal!sabs wrote:France has the same problems with muslims, for exactly the same reasons.
I'm always amused by the American Hystrionics. It's like all the people saying that Obama is going to turn the US into a Muslim Oligarchy. You just have to scratch your head at that.
That's why it is important to always get your reccomended booster shots.Maxus wrote:Don't you can know? You can catch Islam from people! Just like you can catch gay and atheism and being a filthy liberal!
The philosophy of 'multiculturalism' is not primarily responsible for the ghettoisation of some British Muslims; economic inequality, class differences and racism (on both sides) are primarily responsible. These things are much more important than the philosophy espoused by the government - after all, the USA's 'melting pot' myth hasn't prevented the ghettoisation of the urban black community. Middle-class Muslims and Hindus seem to have far fewer (or at least, quite different) problems integrating into British society; conversely, working-class whites are just as vulnerable to radicalisation as working-class Muslims. The EDL and BNP are growing for a reason, after all.tzor wrote:Seriously, Gnosticism, I have worked with enough Englishmen to see the general problems in your worldview philosphy. The probability is not ZERO. It's extreemely small and currently declining, in part because there is a growing trend in the UK and in Europe that multculturalism, the idea that they canbe them and not even want to be a part of us and that's OK, is shit, the giver of self imposed ghettos.
What is it, exactly, that you think is going to happen? How do you think Sharia law is going to take over the UK? The number of Muslims is relevant because it demonstrates that no political party which ran on a Sharia platform could hope to win any meaningful representation. Even if every single Muslim in Britain was instantly radicalised, they would still have almost no political presence whatsoever.
More importantly, unemployment is not the "cause" but the fuel. History is not about the "people" but about the individuals. Those individuals then use the "people" or whatever else they have around them to get into power. Some times the people have "good" intentions, some times they have selfish intentions, but in any event, they are the drivers of history. They make their own critical mass.
Thus the question is not about how many muslims you have in England. Given the fact that your political leaders have all the charisma of wet fish, your churches have fallen into French secularism with the same lack of gusto, and your general ambiguity with whether you are English or European, any good charismatic person will find your high unemployment, lower class people will have a reduced ability to resist.
The increasing conversion of British women to Islam is both interesting and disturbing, but it's ultimately still just a drop in the bucket. Britain has a long and storied history of treating immigrant groups like shit for two or three generations, and then getting used to them and getting along fine after that. I'm not sure there's any reason to believe this won't also be true of the Islamic community.
Are you aware of the conversion rate to Islam by English women? Not as high as the conversion rate to Islam by African Americans during the civil rights movement (whose best example was Mohammad Ali), but still a cause for moderate concern.
AFAIK, that's the usual progression almost everywhere. The exceptions (like Turks in Germany or black people in the USA) tend to involve exceptional circumstances (like the absence of jus soli citizenship or the presence of slavery, respectively).sabs wrote:That's almost identical to the US history of treating immigrant groups like shit for 2 to 3 generations and then forgetting they were immigrants in the first place.
That's interesting. You see the same sort of dynamic at work among some British immigrant communities (the professional-class Gujeratis who were expelled from Kenya, for example), but not others (poor Muslims and, in the early c20th, the Irish in Liverpool).tzor wrote:Generally speaking, in the United States, second generation immigrants are generally the most "american" because they are revolting from the partents. Third generation immigrants are generally "rennisance" immigrants because they see thier old culture in their grandparents, and all grandparents are wonderful and full of cool stuff.
As you go on to later generations ... everyone becomes the proud distant immigrant. You still have people boasting of an ancestor who arrived on the Mayflower for goodness sake.
The Irish in England go back much longer than the early c20th, but the issues involved are very different to the Irish-in-Liverpool issues for a number of reasons. Apart from that, I agree wholeheartedly with this post.sabs wrote:The Muslims and the Irish in liverpool haven't been around long enough.
Not to mention.. why would an Irishman in Liverpool not be a bitter fuck.
The Irish started coming to America in the 1820's with the majority comingi n the 1840's and 50's. They did not blend into American society properly until the 1960's. (JFK being to the Irish Community what Obama is to the Black Community)
It takes a good 100+ years for an immigrant group to become a part of the melting pot. And longer if they're significantly different. Blacks have a special problem, they didn't want to be here, there were some serious atrocities, and it's not like you could take African americans who had been born in the US for at least 5 generations and just send them back to Africa. They aren't African. You go from 1870 to 1970's with serious racial issues. After the 1970s things go underground, it's not longer acceptable to be openly racist. And while we have a Black President, which is amazing and I never expected to see in my life time, Racism is still there. But I say that now, it's in the minority. The problem isn't that African Americans aren't assimilating into American Culture. Because they are, and have been for a long time. The problem is that White American Culture is afraid to accept them as "one of us".
That is generally incorrect. Especially in NYC the Irish had good times and bad times. "Out of Manhattan's fourth ward emerged Al Smith, the grandson of Irish immigrants, who rose from the tenements of the Lower East Side to seek the American presidency. As governor of New York in the 1920s, Smith originated ground-breaking social reform programs that later became the model for Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal. But as the Democratic candidate for president in 1928, Smith was relentlessly bashed by anti-Catholic activists and was resoundingly defeated, losing to incumbent President Herbert Hoover."sabs wrote:The Irish started coming to America in the 1820's with the majority coming in the 1840's and 50's. They did not blend into American society properly until the 1960's. (JFK being to the Irish Community what Obama is to the Black Community)
note: sorry about the quote tags, they are fixed now.tzor wrote: The question of Irish candidates for the presidency and in general was not the fact that they were Irish, but that they were Roman Catholic. This was not ethnic persecution but religious persecution. It still continues today, in part because the Catholic Church is still on the forefront against many of the causes of the progressive left.
It's time to pour out the multiculti Kool-Aid.
That was the message from British Prime Minister David Cameron as he attacked "state multiculturalism" for letting Islamic radicals prosper virtually unchecked in the West.
Instead of celebrating Western freedoms, the Brits have played blind while extremists recruit followers in universities, mosques and online chat rooms.
No more namby-pamby.
"Frankly," he told a security conference Saturday, "we need a lot less of the passive tolerance of recent years and a much more active, muscular liberalism."
...
Cameron's speech points the way to a better answer: open eyes -- and flexing muscles.
"nstead of ignoring this extremist ideology, we -- as governments and as societies -- have got to confront it, in all its forms," he said.
The most effective way to do that, he rightly says, is by promoting classically liberal political values.
Values that "say to citizens, this is what defines us as a society: To belong here is to believe in these things. Now, each of us in our own countries, I believe, must be unambiguous and hard-nosed about this defense of our liberty."
