The Islamophobia Thread

A question within another question, I think it should tecnically be written as either sub-question or subquestion, not sub question, but for once my spelling was on point.

@Anti-t: "Clearly something in American culture must be different for them to support the death penalty in larger numbers, though. Like American culture putting punishment before rehabilitation and the influence of racism in that. Sure those things are not unchangeable, but they exist nonetheless."

I agree that those things are true for many, though not all Amerincans. But imagine someon took those observations and claimed that Americans must be an inherently violent people, that clearly we need to rewrite the Constitution, and maybe America as a nation state should simply be discarded for some other governing arrangement. This is not too far from what many people are saying about Islam.

I wouldn't claim that Americans are inherently violent (not more than people in general, at least), but I can't deny that the other two parts sound kind of tempting.

I've always guessed that the US' attitudes towards punishment vs rehabilitation is strongly rooted in the nation's rugged frontier and colonial history, where spending society's hard-earned resources on trying to accommodate someone who has violated or exploited them would be understandably shunned.

But what reason besides being Muslim could someone have for supporting the death penalty for leaving Islam? Why would any non-Muslim disapprove of leaving Islam? And for the record, I wasn't NECESSARILY saying it's the case that most Muslims support the death penalty for leaving Islam, only that a) it seemed plausible that a majority did based on the poll, and b) it seems like the VERSION of Islam that some of those poll respondents follow must be the reason, because I don't see how anything besides Islam could make someone think you deserve the death penalty for leaving Islam.

Agreed, but it would be harder for me to agree with that if we supported the death penalty for things that presumably only Americans would disapprove of, such as renouncing US citizenship.

I never argued that Muslims are homogeneous, that all of them believe the same things, that what's characteristic of them now will always be in the future, that they're defined by their beliefs, or that Islam hasn't changed over time. So I'm not sure what you're point is.

nvm.

edited 5th Dec '16 8:53:58 AM by M84

They might believe that people should stay within their cultural groups regardless of personal desires. So one could feel that Muslims should stay Muslim, Christians Christian and Buddhists Buddhist. For such a person it's not about their own alligence so much as it is a strong belief in the concept of loyalty to ones group and that a person sudoku be punished for 'betraying' their group.

Hell the back of my brain is saying that there are historical examples of such logic out ther. But god knows if I can remember them.

Interestingly enough, I have one (well, semi-historical).

So there's a famous play Nathan The Wise that's set during the Crusades/during the life of Saladin and there's this plot element of the Jewish protagonist, Nathan, being placed in this Morton's Fork situation (by an evilish Christian priest/official) of having to say which religion is the true one- Judaism, Christianity, or Islam- and answering any of the three would result in his being executed.

The Morton's Fork resulted in part because Saladin (who is presented as a great guy) had put in place a law against apostasy. Basically, the idea was that in order to have peace between multiple religions living in the same kingdom, everyone would have freedom to practice their religion, but couldn't seek converts from/dis other religions.

edited 5th Dec '16 10:17:23 AM by Hodor2

The Mongols were fairly tolerant of multiple faiths and cultures. As long as the people in question accepted Mongol rule, paid tribute and taxes more or less on time and didn't try to slaughter anybody else, things ran smoothly. Mess up, though, and it was equal opportunity slaughter, just say "horse".

edited 5th Dec '16 10:38:20 AM by Euodiachloris

A man in Edmonton threatened a pair of Muslim women by pulling out a rope, making a noose, making verbal threats and then singing O Canada. Fortunately the idiot/SOB got recorded and now he's wanted for questioning.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/hate-crime-noose-lrt-edmonton-1.3876466

USA Today: When wearing a hijab becomes too dangerous

. . . Are you new here?

I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he posted this as a way to mock it. Poe's Law and whatnot.

I live in Spain and I can i'm pretty sure the view of Muslims over here might be even worse than America. As in the overwhelming majority of people believe that ALL muslims are terrorists, or if not, a single-mindedly hateful bunch of backward degenerates that are dead set on taking over and force their religion on us, coming here in droves but without any intention of ever mingling or acclimatizing to our own customs

And even worse, that anyone that DOESN'T believe this are mocked as "progressives" . HAHA RELIGION OF PEACE RIGHT. HAHA WE HAVE A LOT TO LEARN FROM THEM. HAHA THEY WANT TO INTEGRATE I'M SURE. BET ALL THEY NEED IS A LOT OF KISSES AND HUGS, GO GIVE THEM SOME. And that by being "politically correct" we are "giving them free pass to fuck us in the ass"

When the other day Merkel said Germany would move on from the attacks, all the comments were basically "Merkel should be full of shame. What the muslims are doing in Europe is indescriptable, and you better not complain lest you're an islamophobe" "Merkel should've rather said "Germany will live on and we'll all become muslims" "Germany will only get over this when they re-open the soap factories, you'll see how they run then"

It only gets more sickening by the hour

Which part of Spain? I didn't get that when I lived in Barcelona...

At least it's when I'm seeing here in the south, Cartagena has a sizable part of the old city that's mostly occupied by minorities

But it's something when one of my best friends is muslim and I can't mention him too often even among my family because when I do I keep getting comments in the line of "WUH OH" or "are you sure he's trust-worthy, really"

Holy shit. No wonder I kept getting ostracised until I turned atheist and ate the pig and drank the wine.

I swear, if I had known that was what people were saying behind my back, I would have radicalised out of sheer outrage. I don't have enough swear words right now to complain about the sheer unfairness.

I keep getting into arguments with my family because we'll be seeing on TV something about bans on women wearing hijab, and mom spewing something like GOOD! WHO KNOWS WHAT THEY'RE HIDING IN THAT

...Despite the fact terrorists usually do their thing on casual clothing.

And maybe they'll agree that yes, there TOTALLY could be muslims that are good, but then comes their logic that every terrorist you'll see is bound to be arab, so MUSLIMS ARE TERRORISTS!!!!

....and then go back on what they just said because that one third-generation friend you have could "flip a switch and bomb something" "it's in their blood" "I bet his mother wore a burka"

Because at the end of the day it's just easier to have us vs them I guess

Everywhere, all over the world all the time, there are people who get off from othering people and making them angry. Dont fall for it.

Here in Portugal, I experience the same sentiment from my family/friends. I guess there's still a lot of resentment from when the Muslims invaded the iberian peninsula back in the day.

Please do not joke about that. There is enough radical belief in this world already.

edited 18th Dec '16 4:15:37 PM by Grafite

Heh, there's no need to go back that much. Since a good chunk of the media in most European countries are currently responsible for painting Muslims (and Islam as a whole) in an excessively bad light (such as when, in our case, our media constantly questioned the Portuguese imam, David Munir, whenever a terrorist attack happens in Europe - I still remember how uncomfortable he was during an interview on television right after the Brussels attacks, I think it was on RTP1), to ask him the same type of questions that put the man in an uncomfortable position, even when he continually defends that said terrorist attacks have nothing to do with Islam - he has a point, really, even if it's a highly defensive one).

Still, things are not as bad as in some other European countries (in spite of what happens on social media and of covert Islamophobia IRL), and this week he and other folks at the mosque in Lisbon organized a sort of Christmas dinner for Muslims, Christians, atheists and other folks who want to have a good time to socialize and stuff. There was also the time when he was invited to watch a friendly match between our national team and Belgium's team, a few days after said Brussels attacks.

edited 18th Dec '16 4:33:25 PM by Quag15

I've also seen the argument that just because you know some muslims that are good, doesn't mean the rest are too

The Daesh aren't true muslims, and even if they were, how is putting them all in the same sack any better? That's why we need to make goddamn distinctions! How is that so hard to get?