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"Tabuisiert ist in Deutschland aber nach wie vor die Nähe des Islam zu Gewalt und Unterdrückung von Minderheiten."

Ich würde nicht pauschal von "dem Islam" sprechen. Es stimmt sicher, dass islamistische Strömungen zur Zeit so stark sind wie nie zuvor in der islamischen Geschichte, aber deshalb sollte man nicht alle Muslime damit gleichsetzen. Ich weiß zwar, dass das wie das übliche multikulturelle Geschwurbel klingt, es ist aber trotzdem deshalb nicht falsch. Wir sollten nicht vergessen: Im Mittelalter waren zeitweise WIR (bzw. unsere abendländisch-christliche Kultur) die Kreuzzügler, während die islamische Welt durchaus aufgeklärt und fortgeschritten war. Mit der Gleichsetzung "Islam" und "Islamismus" würde man den Fanatikern, Fundies und Terroristen einen großen Gefallen tun.

My German is not what it was, but if I understand KF's post, whe should remember that once upon a time the Islamic workd was advanced and the Christian world was in the dark ages; If we tar all Muslims with the same brush, we strengthen the fundies, etc.

Abfall. Mull (sorry, no umlaut on my keyboard). The ascendency Islamic culture once enjoyed is no longer relevant, and no one is talking about bad-mouthing all Muslims.

Instead of addressing the issue, you avoided it with spineless cautionary blather of false humility and a strawman argument.

Utter dreck.

"Schwule Säue! Euch muss man vergasen."
.............................^^^^^^^^

wer sagt jetzt, die moslems ließen sich nicht integrieren? seht ihr, schon haben sie einen wichtigen teil der deutschen kultur aufgenommen!

sorry, der font ist falsch skaliert... also, die unterstreichung ^^^^^^^^ bezog sich auf "vergasen".

I know this fits best in your picture.
But I wonder what numbers would come up if one would take the time and work to investigate how radicalized Jews think about Gays.
I'd bet you won't see a big difference.
Yes, it's effing shit that cases like this one happen.
But it's even more rubbish to make this to a case against Muslims, against Muli-Cultural living and all that.
The enemy is not "the muslim". The enemy are rich guys like Osama and friends who make a business out of abusing Muslims beliefs and act under the Muslim towel.
But it'S stupid not to see it and to keep on hacking about "The Muslim". That's not brighter than the former german understanding of "Der Jude",

Lili Marleen: I know you from another blog from which you nearly got yourself banned. You are a rabid anti-semite. We have all noticed the attacks on gays perpetrated by radicalized Jews.

None.

Lili Marleen wins the award for the stupidest comment I have read on a blog today, with KF (who may be the same person) coming in a close second. Why posit hypothetical "radicalized Jews" when the subject being discussed is an actual event committed by actual people?

You know, a certain group of radicalized Germans is responsible for the worst genocide in human history. But don't worry: I'm sure radicalized Martians wouldn't have treated the Venusians any better.

Lilli: that was a stupid and revealing comment.

"I have read on a blog today, with KF (who may be the same person) coming in a close second."

No, I am NOT Lili Marleen and agree with you that it is stupid to talk about Jewish radicalism in a discussion about Islamistic discrimination against gays. Of course I can't judge wether she is "a rabid anti-semite" since I never read her comments in the "other blog". On the other hand I agree with her when she criticizes the assaults on Islam as a RELIGION and Islamic culture. This culture may not be what it was in the past, but that doesn't matter. It is important to remember that cultures are DEVELOPING and that the behaviour of some Muslims IS not the culture. Please think of the moderate Islam to understand why you can't generalize the behaviour of the Muslims in the "Welt am Sonntag"-article. Anyone who fails to notice the differences between "Islam" and "Islam" makes himself guilty of taking over racist slurs.

KF: Islam is not a race.

It is not "racist" to point out that homosexuals today suffer far more under Islamic countries than anywhere else.

Just take a look at the map:

http://www.sodomylaws.org/world/world.htm

100% of all discussions I witnessed over
the past 12 month about ANY important
subject (Iraq war, al-Qaida,
Islam and the West, Jews and the West,
the West and the Rest, the Rest
alone...) sooner or later
were centering around
one question which to my
mind is deeply philosophical:

For instance, somebody said:
"XY was beaten up/killed/insulted
by Z, who belongs to the class of A"

A could be "the" Germans,
"the" Muslims, "the" whatsoever.

After the initial argument ("XY was beaten..."),
somebody usually replied that
"the" A do not exist.

I want to stop at this point.
It may seem trifling, but
to my mind is ABSOLUTELY
central for EVERYTHING (landing
on Mars, making love to your secretary,
eating, sleeping) what we
think about the possibility of
a "class" of "A" existing.

On one hand, it is
easy (to use a polite term),
to say, for instance,
"Islamic culture
has been great in the past",
i.e. to generalize that
a)"Islam" exists, b) "Islam" is
a culture and c) it was splendid in past
times.
You usually do not get any verbal
beating if you come up with such
flattering utterances about
the attributes of any class (of
human beings). The Vatican
does not oppose the
view that some Christian saints
are representative of "THE" Christian/Catholic
heritage. Germans usually do not
protest against being "THE" nation of
Goethe, etc. But
replace saints by crusades,
inquisition, peadophile priests and
Goethe by Goering, Hitler and
Goebbels and you will find
yourself pretty quick confronted
with a different philosophy.

I would like to have
the above problem (I do not
know if I was clear enought about
what I mean) first of all
separated from all
the emotional/political/violence stuff.
For these seem to be different things?

What do you think?

Greetings to all.

Pharao.

100% of all discussions I witnessed over
the past 12 month about ANY important
subject (Iraq war, al-Qaida,
Islam and the West, Jews and the West,
the West and the Rest, the Rest
alone...) sooner or later
were centering around
one question which to my
mind is deeply philosophical:

For instance, somebody said:
"XY was beaten up/killed/insulted
by Z, who belongs to the class of A"

A could be "the" Germans,
"the" Muslims, "the" whatsoever.

After the initial argument ("XY was beaten..."),
somebody usually replied that
"the" A do not exist.

I want to stop at this point.
It may seem trifling, but
to my mind is ABSOLUTELY
central for EVERYTHING (landing
on Mars, making love to your secretary,
eating, sleeping) what we
think about the possibility of
a "class" of "A" existing.

On one hand, it is
easy (to use a polite term),
to say, for instance,
"Islamic culture
has been great in the past",
i.e. to generalize that
a)"Islam" exists, b) "Islam" is
a culture and c) it was splendid in past
times.
You usually do not get any verbal
beating if you come up with such
flattering utterances about
the attributes of any class (of
human beings). The Vatican
does not oppose the
view that some Christian saints
are representative of "THE" Christian/Catholic
heritage. Germans usually do not
protest against being "THE" nation of
Goethe, etc. But
replace saints by crusades,
inquisition, peadophile priests and
Goethe by Goering, Hitler and
Goebbels and you will find
yourself pretty quick confronted
with a different philosophy.

I would like to have
the above problem (I do not
know if I was clear enought about
what I mean) first of all
separated from all
the emotional/political/violence stuff.
For these seem to be different things.

What do you think?

Greetings to all.

Pharao.

Pharao: Oh, dear. Been reading Plato, have we? Within the confines of rhetorical philosophy - or philosphic rhetoric, if you prefer - you have a point. Not an original point, but a point.

You wrote:

I would like to have
the above problem (I do not know if I was clear enought about what I mean) first of all separated from all the emotional/political/violence stuff.
For these seem to be different things.

Here is your problem. These are not different things. "X" assaults "Y", and both "X" and "Y" do indeed exist as ideas. But it is not the ideas of X and Y that need to be adressed. It is the blood drawn by the assault. Blood is real. Y may exist as an idea for you to manipulate in constructing an idea-universe, but Y has two children and a spouse who is ill. And Y just got his very real ass kicked.

Your turn.

Dear Pamela,

is blood really real? You are writing
about "blood", as if "blood" could
easily and unequivocally be
distinguished from "not-blood".

Alas, this is an illusion.
I gather from the press that
some scientists (somewhere
in Europe, I think it was Sweden)
are very close to creating blood,
i.e. a substance that
resembles
human blood in every
aspect, but which is not
taken from human beings.
Well now, would you call this BLOOD?

But this is only a simple
example. Imagine a dictatorship
where people are not killed
by gas, bullets etc. but where
there is no bloodshed, because
people are driven to suicide without
anybody
even knowing that it was not
THEM who killed themselves.

Your answer does not satisfy me.
Yeah, in an abstract medium such
as an internet forum you can
do as if there was always
a marked difference between "X" and "Y",
but in "reality" this is not the case.

Or, to come back to the original issue.
If we enter some
high-brow academic
discourse about Islam (or in fact
anything), we may seem to be able to
put up definitions that are clear.
But the problem is, as you
so rightly said,
reality does not care about our
definitions.
We cannot do as if
reality was what we want it to be defined as.

In reality, there is
not "Islam" versus "non-Islam"
and "blood" versus "non-blood"
but there are only many (perhaps billions
of) conceptions about Islam and blood.
Only these are important.
Your pointing at some
physical or material level is meaningless,
because that is not the issue.
The issue is not THAT
blood is shed or not (it is,
unfortunately), but
WHY it is.

It is a difference if
I die
a) because I give blood in
a voluntary medical experiment, which,
unfortunately, turns bad
or
b) because I defend somebody or something
or
c) because I attack somebody or
something
or ... or... or...
According to your "bloody" definition
(sorry, I´d rather give 1 l of blood
than miss a pun),
this would all be one and the same.
But in fact, all this
ways of giving blood or
dying because of it are
very far apart from each other.

As to Islam: My problem (which is still there,
I insist), is that
many, many (really many, almost
everybody) uses the word "Islam"
to cover many, undifferentiated
aspects of reality. And then
they choose whichever aspect
is suitable for their purposes.

I guess we all know the Mullah
talk about "Islam is peace", but
wait until they proclaim
jihad, you will see that this is not
an exhaustive definition...

I apologize for having been
long and polemic.

I am waiting for your next comment.

Yours, Pharao.


but

You are like somebody

A,

Dear Pamela,

is blood really real? You are writing
about "blood", as if "blood" could
easily and unequivocally be
distinguished from "not-blood".

Alas, this is an illusion.
I gather from the press that
some scientists (somewhere
in Europe, I think it was Sweden)
are very close to creating blood,
i.e. a substance that
resembles
human blood in every
aspect, but which is not
taken from human beings.
Well now, would you call this BLOOD?

But this is only a simple
example. Imagine a dictatorship
where people are not killed
by gas, bullets etc. but where
there is no bloodshed, because
people are driven to suicide without
anybody
even knowing that it was not
THEM who killed themselves.

Your answer does not satisfy me.
Yeah, in an abstract medium such
as an internet forum you can
do as if there was always
a marked difference between "X" and "Y",
but in "reality" this is not the case.

Or, to come back to the original issue.
If we enter some
high-brow academic
discourse about Islam (or in fact
anything), we may seem to be able to
put up definitions that are clear.
But the problem is, as you
so rightly said,
reality does not care about our
definitions.
We cannot do as if
reality was what we want it to be defined as.

In reality, there is
not "Islam" versus "non-Islam"
and "blood" versus "non-blood"
but there are only many (perhaps billions
of) conceptions about Islam and blood.
Only these are important.
Your pointing at some
physical or material level is meaningless,
because that is not the issue.
The issue is not THAT
blood is shed or not (it is,
unfortunately), but
WHY it is.

It is a difference if
I die
a) because I give blood in
a voluntary medical experiment, which,
unfortunately, turns bad
or
b) because I defend somebody or something
or
c) because I attack somebody or
something
or ... or... or...
According to your "bloody" definition
(sorry, I´d rather give 1 l of blood
than miss a pun),
this would all be one and the same.
But in fact, all this
ways of giving blood or
dying because of it are
very far apart from each other.

As to Islam: My problem (which is still there,
I insist), is that
many, many (really many, almost
everybody) uses the word "Islam"
to cover many, undifferentiated
aspects of reality. And then
they choose whichever aspect
is suitable for their purposes.

I guess we all know the Mullah
talk about "Islam is peace", but
wait until they proclaim
jihad, you will see that this is not
an exhaustive definition...

I apologize for having been
long and polemic.

I am waiting for your next comment.

Yours, Pharao.


but

You are like somebody


Dear Pamela,

is blood really real? You are writing
about "blood", as if "blood" could
easily and unequivocally be
distinguished from "not-blood".

Alas, this is an illusion.
I gather from the press that
some scientists (somewhere
in Europe, I think it was Sweden)
are very close to creating blood,
i.e. a substance that
resembles
human blood in every
aspect, but which is not
taken from human beings.
Well now, would you call this BLOOD?

But this is only a simple
example. Imagine a dictatorship
where people are not killed
by gas, bullets etc. but where
there is no bloodshed, because
people are driven to suicide without
anybody
even knowing that it was not
THEM who killed themselves.

Your answer does not satisfy me.
Yeah, in an abstract medium such
as an internet forum you can
do as if there was always
a marked difference between "X" and "Y",
but in "reality" this is not the case.

Or, to come back to the original issue.
If we enter some
high-brow academic
discourse about Islam (or in fact
anything), we may seem to be able to
put up definitions that are clear.
But the problem is, as you
so rightly said,
reality does not care about our
definitions.
We cannot do as if
reality was what we want it to be defined as.

In reality, there is
not "Islam" versus "non-Islam"
and "blood" versus "non-blood"
but there are only many (perhaps billions
of) conceptions about Islam and blood.
Only these are important.
Your pointing at some
physical or material level is meaningless,
because that is not the issue.
The issue is not THAT
blood is shed or not (it is,
unfortunately), but
WHY it is.

It is a difference if
I die
a) because I give blood in
a voluntary medical experiment, which,
unfortunately, turns bad
or
b) because I defend somebody or something
or
c) because I attack somebody or
something
or ... or... or...
According to your "bloody" definition
(sorry, I´d rather give 1 l of blood
than miss a pun),
this would all be one and the same.
But in fact, all this
ways of giving blood or
dying because of it are
very far apart from each other.

As to Islam: My problem (which is still there,
I insist), is that
many, many (really many, almost
everybody) uses the word "Islam"
to cover many, undifferentiated
aspects of reality. And then
they choose whichever aspect
is suitable for their purposes.

I guess we all know the Mullah
talk about "Islam is peace", but
wait until they proclaim
jihad, you will see that this is not
an exhaustive definition...

I apologize for having been
long and polemic.

I am waiting for your next comment.

Yours, Pharao.

Pharao, here's a hint. You have to click on the POST button only once.

If I punched you in the mouth, would you name that red stuff running down your face blood?

I'm not interested in your rhetoric. It amounts to nothing more than intellectual masturbation. It is tedious, boring and vain.

Bye.

Dear anonymous,

Thank you for your
enlighening hints
about blood, masturbation and
the "post" button (unforuntately,
there was an error message as I
pushed it the first time, so I
tried several times again, the
system does not seem to be perfect.

Pharao.

I have not read through Pharao's second reply but I think something should be made clear: If we write about an incident (e. g., the attack against the homosexuals executed by the Muslims), we can think in classes only if the incident is *typical*, *characteristic* for these classes (in our case meaning that Muslims *tend to* be violent against sexual minorities, or Germans *usually* hush up such incidents).

I don't see a point in distinguishing the many aspects of Islam; mainly, like any religion, Islam consists of the Quran and the Tradition, which are, from the modern viewpoint archaic and antiliberal. (I say modern viewpoint since it is unnecessary to state separately that 1000 years ago, people thought very differently.)

My sincere apologies for my bad English, I'm a school student.

Finally, somebody seems to
grasp my problem...

If I understand you correctly,
you are refining the initial
twofold stereotype view (Islam - non-Islam,
German - non-German etc.) by
introducing the shade of "typcial".

Let me introduce another thought.
In modern societies as the US, many
things are copyrighted. I remember
even AOL-TIME-WARNER (or however
they may call themselves after the n-th
merger) wanting to
copyright the phrase "You have mail".
One the one hand, this may seem ridiculous,
but there are some clear advantages to
having copyrighted (or otherwise
controlled) terminology. If,
for instance, somebody walks out on the
street and offers a product for sale the name of
which has already been sold, he
risks to be presecuted.

Why I am talking about all this is that
there has never been any effort
to copyright such words
as "Allah", "Islam" etc.
I admit that it could seem
ridiculous to do so, but
the advantage would be
to have control.

My initial problem was (and is)
related to the fact that
when "Islam" pops
up in the news, frequently
one does not know
what they are talking about.
"One" Islam? Islam as religion,
Islam as a religious-political
ideology? As a pretext to
kill other people (remember Al-Qaida), etc.
Jesus said in the NT (Matthew: "Not
everyone who says ``Lord, lord´´ to me,
will ender the kingdom of the heavens."
Jesus seems to have been aware of the
problem.

There is a crucial importance between,
for instance, Roman Catholics and
"Islam". Islam is a perfectly
vague system/religion/ideology, which
can (and is) being used for all kinds
of ends, just as its users want to have it.
But there is no real control.
In Roman Catholicism, the Pope and his
hierarchy in Rome unambiguously
determine what may and what may
not be called "Roman Catholic".

Apart from all other differences
between Islam and the rest of the world,
Islam has never been able to
define itself unambiguously.

Greetings,

Pharao


Germany (


If a latin american gang mugs a german are they anti german? Representative of a general anti german bias in latin america?

Stupid question you might say.

Were the attackers of the gays mentioned crazy fascist-islamists, or a bunch of testosterone crazed youths whose sense of machismo made them attack two homosexuals?

And if a group of say 4 african-americans attacked 2 gay men in Chicago, would anybody rush to see if they were members of the Nation of Islam?

Just asking.

The fact of members of an ethnic (religious,
sexual) group A attacking members of
another group (or people not ostensibly belonging
to any particular group) proves nothing.
The attack might be executed without
ethnicity etc. playing
any role.

What is important is the CONSCIENCE of
the aggressors.

I can slap my neighbour, who
incidentally is black, a jew, German,
a transvestite etc.,
into his
face because he raped my daughter.
There would be nothing racist or
discriminating to my action.

The whole thing changes if I aggress
other people because of what they are.

Back to Islam: I do not care
if Muslims love me or hate me,
because both the reason
for their love and
their hate is totally unacceptable.
For it is based on a
totatitarian belief that takes
human beings to be
irrelevant but
some morally dubious entity (the existence
of which cannot even be
proven) to be all-important.

If a latin American attacks
a Chinaman, he can be non-discriminating,
but Muslims are
discriminating per definitionem.

Pharao


Natürlich hat die Feindseligkeit vieler Moslems gegenüber Lesben und Schwulen etwas mit dem Islam zu tun.Man müsse Schwule töten behauptet zum Beispiel auch "islam.online", welches sich ansonsten als gemässigt und weltoffen gibt.Gemässigte und radikale Imame sind sich darin sehr einig, nur über die Art der Tötung liegen sie sich in den Haaren.Dass Homosexuelle ermordet gehören kann man ebenfalls in fast jeder Moschee hören. Ein Hadith zitiert Kultgründer Mohammed folgendermassen: "Begegnest du zwei die die Sünde von Lut begehen (schwuler Sex), töte beide, denjenigen der es tut und denjenigen dem es getan wird"! Das ist der Islam! Auch wenn naive Vertreter der "political correcteness" uns etwas anderes erzählen wollen!rom

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