Europe: Giving the finger

[Atrahasis]

Europe is essentially giving the finger to Muslims everywhere, and I do believe they are enjoying themselves as they are doing it. I'm well aware that they have many reasons for feeling the way they do: immigrants causing social problems, sometimes rioting, threatening their women and making them feel unsafe in the streets. Internationally, you have the pressing issues of Iran and Iraq which I'm sure don't make anybody very happy.

But the fact is that Europe, outside of maybe the UK, actively practices social discrimination and just makes non-whites (especially Muslims) feel bad and keeps them unemployed. This is just about the same as a tacit apartheid, and Europeans had better wake up and smell the coffee, as France had to last year. You can't keep that many people who are that organized and that angry under your foot for very long, because I believe that any race who gets treated like that (even whites if the situation were reversed) would rise up.

It's times like this that I can clearly see the value of social equality programs that were practiced in the US and elsewhere like Affirmative Action. Sure, maybe the most qualified person didn't always get a certain job, but the point was to give a more even demographic spread as to who gets a piece of the pie. It's not just about "getting" or "giving" either, it's about creating a more fair society overall, and societies that don't have Big Brother actively forcing people to create one will inevitably suffer the consequences, in the form of social unrest, riots, and people facing off and giving each other the finger.

As Europe is plainly doing! I don't believe for ONE SECOND that it's all about "freedom of the press", because we have that in Canada, the US, and the UK, and yet people also have another valuable thing called "common sense" (most of the time). Common sense tells anyone that publishing a cartoon like that, and persisting to do so even after riots have started, is basically the act of an angry child (or maybe an immature teenager) who feels he is really hot shit when he gives the finger to the gang across the street.

I do admit it may be fun to give somebody the finger...but it's not the mature thing to do. This is Europe's problem, and they need to take a good long look in the mirror if they are even capable of that.

[S33K100]

B*llshit my friend, there is absolutely NO excuse for what the Muslim rioters have been doing, burning embassies, people hyave died Atra, died, because an immature culture can't take a little criticism. They're allowed to wave placards saying behead those who insult their religion, but we are not allowed to show any pride in our own culture, our own way of life.

A man attended the London protest last week dressed as a suicide bomber. This man it later transpired was a convicted heroin and cocaine dealer. I mean WTF!? How can it be appropriate to go to a protest dressed as a suicide bomber or waving signs calling for murder. That's what that is legally - in the UK if you wave a sign like that saying 'behead those who insult the prophet' (actual sign seen on footage) that is a criminal offence - incitment to murder. Yet no arrests were made, no attempts to even get rid of some of the more immature idiotic troublemakers.

Islam is the immature culture here, not us, they are the ones KILLING people over a joke. Freedom of speech is a qualified right, it is not absolute, you can't just say or do whatever you want under the freedom of expression in the ECHR (theoretically governs rights in all EU countries, constantly violated by the UK since 9/11). What the Danish newspapers printed is no different to the depiction of 'Buddy Christ' in the film Dogma, I don't recall the fundies in America burning down buildings and causing death and destruction when that film came out, and Buddy Christ was one of the least offensive things in that film. In this case the people who have violated their rights under the ECHR are the protesters in London, and the government did NOTHING to stop them, it sickens me that we in the UK are so god-damned timid, so meek and terrified lest we offend 'the Muslim vote'.

The Muslim community needs to wake up to the fact that the world doesn't agree with them, they are not necessarily right, their religion is only one of many, their culture is loathed by a great part of the western world and that they need to work with us if they ever hope to be accepted in our society. If I were to go to Iran I'd have to put up with their batsh!t insane laws, but I would, cause otherwise you end up with a few less appendages, but our liberal society is so pathetic at the moment we can't even stand up to the 19th C. Gentleman's club that is the Conservative party in the UK (who will win the next election with the oh-so-charismatic David Cameron) or the neo-nazis-in-drag in the US Republican party, let alone the radical Muslims.

Another thing you maybe haven't encountered is that the majority of Muslims in Britain at least, are just as appaled by the protests here and the riots in the middle east as I and other English people are. The extremists are a vocal minority intent on sh!tstirring as we would put it. In fact on of the clerics in Denmark took the cartoons after they were published, and added several new ones that were far more offensive to the article before flying out to wherever their bosses are in the mid-east and showing them the 'ammended' version to incite riots.

This is the fundamental situation Atra - The radical Muslims want a war with us, they want us to get so pissed off we finally snap and 'press the button' so to speak, the majority of the Muslim community are at peace with the rest of 'us' (Europeans and non-Muslim immigrants), my Muslim friends infact took the jokes in their stride. And they recognise that you have to be able to stand a little heat in our kitchen

I was going to make a comparison between the behaviour of the radical clerics and Hitler baiting the Allies in the inter-war years - he didn't want the Munich Agreement/Dictat, he wanted war over Czechoslovakia. But then I'd probably get cries of 'reductio-ad-hitlerum', so we can just ignore this last paragraph.

[Atrahasis]

Very spirited! Thanks for calling me on my comments, I in fact enjoy it when people do, and that's all kidding aside.

The immature thing to do is to keep insulting people after the fire has started, to fan the flames, because that's just plain goading and nothing more, the act of someone with little manners and even less restraint and rationality.

The fact is that Islam and its culture is 1/5th of the human population, and to know how to deal with it in a peaceful way is the goal of the advanced civilizations that (should) know better. To think that you can beat them in by pissing them off is both illigical and about the kind of action you would expect from a more ignorant, less tolerant, or frustrated civilization who still has a lot of growing up to do, because the fact is that I just can't imagine the most Muslim-acclimatized Western civilizations like the US, Canada, and the UK having been stuipid enough to print something like those cartoons in the first place, much less keep on printing them after the shit hits the fan.

If you think about it, the reason why publishers and ergo people would want to publish something like that in the first place is because they live in a society where they feel endangered by the brown man. Some of these dangers may actually be real, some imagined. But whatever the actual threat level is from these "animals" or "hooligans" as I'm sure they are called, it all goes to creating a really high level of repulsion and frustration.

Ergo, "Europe giving the Muslims the finger", which only means they have yet to figure out how to deal with non-whites as well as the "big three" melting pots have.

[Sapharite]

As the matter of fact I was offended as a citizen of Europe. Offended because you put every European into one bucket by generalizing all the people into one denominator which is quite ridiculous.

However most Europeans have been doing the same for most of the years with the Americans.

What my point is we are doing here greater stupidity by showing our human nature to dig and find any futile reason to treat or judge about others inequalities.

[aridas sofia]

Once the cartoons were published, the debate moved from the propriety of the act to the propriety of the response. I probably wouldn't have published the things for the same reason I wouldn't advocate assassination in order to raise the issue of gun control. Sometimes the ends just don't justify the means. But I don't agree with the labeling of Europe as apartheid, or any such thing. They are at a decidedly earlier stage in the evolution of a multicultural society than is the US, and unfortunately for them there is still a hell of a lot of discord to go through before things even begin to settle down. Generations of discord. Judge them if you must, but judge them as what they are -- trying to do the right thing for all their people, including the Muslim population.

Let's get real -- the Muslim clerics of Scandinavia used what happened in order to inflame the basically moderate populations of the Muslim world, hoping to draw more to their extremist, anti-West views. They used the fact that the Muslim societies tend to be closed and repressive, with a very restrictive flow of information, to perpetuate lies and distortions. Just as the most controversial cartoon showed, they sneak the bomb of discord into the hearts of their followers along with a religion whose teachings would abhor such a thing.

I am the son of a Dane, and go back to visit my family there every year or so. I know those people, and they are the most welcoming, friendly people I have ever come across in my many travels. The Danish publisher that printed those cartoons has stated that he did what he did in order to reclaim the same freedom to discuss Islam as he once had -- and still has -- with the world's other great religions. "Discuss" includes the tools of the comic, and by demanding that Islam be included in what could be discussed he was including Muslims in Danish society in a way they have not yet been included.

Slavery was once a subject deemed inappropriate for "proper" discussion, and the result was that social pressures built to the point the problem could only be dealt with through violence. If anything, the relations between Europeans and Islam have a much longer and more tragic history, that must be discussed by everyone in order for Europe to have any hope of peaceful multiculturalism.

[Atrahasis]

It strikes me as ironic that though the US these days has very poor international relations, they still have better race relations in their own society than the rest of most of the world.

As for Europeans being very friendly people, I always find that true of ANY individual regardless of whether he is white or whatever color. People, individually, can be very nice. However, as a group they can be very naughty indeed. I call it the "IQ reduction effect" where too many heads together in one place, especially if they are all of one race, can end up having a net reduction in average IQ and they end up doing dumb-ass things like Nazism, racial attacks, football/soccer hooliganism, gang rapes, ethnic purges, or even giving the finger to a lot of people. This of course holds just as true for the brown man as for the white.

The only logical conclusion I can draw is that different races intrinsically despise each other at a genetic and instinctual level, because overcoming racial hatred (or at least stopping yourself from acting upon it even if you do have it) requires a fair amount of brains and relfection, which is diluted in a group situation.

[Sapharite]

You mean groups IQ is erqual to 3 but from 4 and above the dog starts to bark? ;D