Thanks Al, I think this is an important thread to make.

For many muslims, it must seem that they are adressed on their religion alone, rather than on their nationality, friendliness, ability to play dip, etc, etc.

In my home country Holland, we've now grown accustomed to referring to people as in their heritage. Third generation migrants from Morocco are simply referred to as 'Moroccans', disregarding whether or not they've actually ever been there (often only a few times to visit family). And more often then not, they're immediately seen as muslim, whether or not they actually practice or not. It is such an crude view of reality.

In the same sense, it seems that the loudest are in the minority and those in the majority are simply tired of their bullshit. Dipplayer's bigotry is representative of nothing more than his own ignorance and not of anyone else.

Surely you should call 3rd generation Moroccans Dutch ......

Three of my closest friends follow Islam. They are good, kind, generous family men who are just as upset by ISIS as the rest of us. Their faith has taught them that the taking of another persons life for any reason is haram, but then they are normal rational human beings so you would expect nothing less.

I find dipplayer's bigotry rather distasteful even though I am myself quite critical of Islam.

Fuck off, all of you. I don't care what you think of me.

Then don't get defensive when someone calls you out on your hatred and prejudice.

You have no idea what those words mean. You just use them as clubs.

Maybe I'm missing part of the story, but how is "And none of us are advocating anything else" a statement of hatred or prejudice, bo_sox...

Was there a thread or incident giving context to that? 'Cause otherwise...he just seems to be peacefully agreeing with the thread?

@dipplayer ... you created a thread which in its title included "Islam is evil" - do you really think that hatred and prejudice don't apply to it? Take some time and educate yourself on how stupid you continue to make yourself look.

@Obi ... threadID=1192831, threadID=1192918

Thank you for making this thread. There are a lot of hateful things said about the Islamic religion on this site, and i think it's helpful to show that the majority of web dippers do not think that way.

As for myself, I care more about what someone reads and what their tastes and personality/aptitude is like rather than their background.

Diverse backgrounds amongst friends are fun, and I think it's a source of immense strength, but I'd think of the Muslim friends I have as being any number of things--some are shy, some are outspoken, some are partyers, some not so much, that is to say, they're all actual PEOPLE before a title--before being "Muslim," unless the circumstances of the discussion made their being that actually relevant.

Ethnic or religious background shouldn't matter...

To speak for just myself, as long as someone doesn't have a view which is hateful towards me or my ancestry, I'm fine with theirs...so 1.6 billion Muslims in the world, and *MOST* would be perfectly fine with Jews, and so we'd get along.

If it were someone who backed Hamas, and held the political belief that exterminating the Jews was a good thing/should happen...then yeah, we're not going to get along, NOT because you're Muslim, but because you'd want me dead, and that's kind of a friendship killer. It'd be the same thing with a Neo Nazi or KKK or Christianized White Power group.

One of my dearest friends, I've said before, is an Armenian immigrant from Lebanon, and she's infinitely nicer and more sociable than me, an all-around better person, makes friends like crazy...*BUT*, hey, if you happen to deny the Armenian Genocide (or are a Turk denying it to her, as she's had happen before) then chances are she won't want to be friends, not because you're Muslim, but because you've denied a slaughter that directly affected her and her family. People tend to take that kind of thing personal-like, ya know.

I don't know how she'd be with a Turk who accepts the Armenian Genocide...it's not as if she goes out of her way to seek Turks out and ask...

And I'd be cool with anyone anywhere, even someone who was vehemently anti-Israel (as another of my great friends is), just so long as they don't take the "step too far" and endorse Hamas and/or that attitude that the Jews should all die.

We need to focus less on generalizations about race and religion and more on the specifics of the political rifts--like the ones above--as THOSE are what keep people apart, more and more.

Blindfolded, you wouldn't know a Christian from a Muslim from a Jew--but you'd be able to hear someone speaking kindness or hate speech towards you and those like you, and THAT is what drives people apart, as much as anything.

...Aaaaaaannnddd I open bo_sox's link...

dipplayer2004, aside from your point on Christendom--which is the one point I'd agree with you, Christendom = "the worldwide body or society of Christians" (so sayeth Google's definition) and yeah, that's historically been used more in a political connotation (ie, Christian states) as opposed to the actual religion of Christianity itself--what are you saying, exactly?

Yeah, colonization DID screw up the Middle East. And Africa. BIG TIME.

You can make the (fair) argument that, say, Sunni and Shiite sects have been fighting for centuries, and certain Islamic empires--*cough, Ottomans, cough*--have their own legacies of atrocities committed, but yeah...

Europe DID kind of screw the region over via imperialism as well.

...I'm getting a little tired of that explanation being used as much as it is today--because again, yes, a lot of the problems in the area have roots in imperialism (case in point, the borders of places like Iraq and, more notably, the way African countries were drawn along European lines rather than existent racial and cultural divides in Africa, thus allowing for, you know, extreme chaos and oh, a genocide or two to occur) but not all are, and there are plenty of problems that are occurring there now which predate European imperialism (the Sunni/Shiite clash and Turkish/Kuridsh issue being just two.)

But yeah...what are you trying to say about Muslims, exactly?

The history of Judaism, Christianity, Islam, And Hinduism are all pretty blood-soaked...and I'm sure there are cases of Buddhists taking things too far as well, I'm just not a scholar on such things. But yeah, how are you trying to set Christianity up as somehow better than Islam, they've both been bloody.

The Ottomans were kicked out of the heart of the ME in 1918. The Europeans were out by 1945, I believe. They had less than 30 years to screw everything up. Yeah, no. Imperialism has nothing to do with it. But keep blaming the evil white man. It's all his fault.

I swear nobody knows any history before the 1960s.

"i think it's helpful to show that the majority of web dippers do not think that way."

Yes, the majority of us would never violate the social norms of our culture, which dictate that all cultures, races, and religions are equally valid and special, except for white Europeans and Christianity.

Oh, and Israel.

"The Ottomans were kicked out of the heart of the ME in 1918. The Europeans were out by 1945, I believe."

...You DO know Europeans dealt in the Middle East before 1918? O.o

And given that I ended my above statements by stating that I think the imperialism argument is used, if not too much, then too flippantly today--the same way comparing every politician you dislike to Hitler, if you blame everything ever on one problem, even if that problem has validity, you inadvertently come across as trivializing it via overuse--I hardly think I'm "blaming the evil white man."

I'm blaming anyone who is to be blamed there, white, non-white, or any permutation thereof.

Fair enough, Obi.

What is wrong with this lad, he seems to be losing his rag.
Diplodocus when you speak with your Muslim friends about your feelings towards Islam what do they say?

I like diplodocuses . . .

"Europe DID kind of screw the region over via imperialism as well."
So did U. S. imperialism.

"...You DO know Europeans dealt in the Middle East before 1918? O.o"
And as recently as this year.

dipplayer2004:
"I swear nobody knows any history before the 1960s."
I do; you are wrong. Imperialism has everything to do with it. The radical Islam that does so much damage today was basically dead in 1918.

This^ If im correct the first attack by radical Islamists against the West was the bombing of the US marine barracks in the 70s or 80s during the Lebanese civil war, with support from Iran. The problem was that the US supported one side, the Christian Phalangists, by bombing their enemies. Instead of going as peace keepers, they participated in the war and became targets themselves

Wow. This went from an anti hate thread to competition on who know's their history better. But whatever, discussion is discussion.

Human and societal behavior is complex, hard to analyze and almost impossible to predict. There aren't even enough countries in the world to do statistical analysis with much significance. It is clear though that many factors are involved and singling out any one such factor to explain the behavior is just silly. A lot of people like easy explanations but they are almost always false.

Since there are both Muslim societies as well as previous colonies that do not exhibit high levels of violence it is quite obvious that neither factor fully explains what is currently going on in the Middle-East. However, since more than a proportional amount of today's violence seems to be taking place in Muslim societies and previous colonies, it seems reasonable to assume that both factors contribute to this to some extent.

Look as long as the majority of the world's people believe in fairy tales for which there is no justifiable evidence, the world will remain a fucked up, ignorant, and basically hellish place.

Muslims don't have any sort of monopoly on stupid.

By that same metric, numerous wars involving the US and various European countries in the Middle East have just as much of an effect, and considering that those wars prompt people into extremism, it's fully reasonable to suggest that they have more of an effect than the tendency for radicalism to spread in affected communities.

I saw star trek, you know. That's why all the federation got along so well... not a one of those bastards ever started ranting about Jesus.

YJ, wrong! Watch Star Trek V: The Final Frontier!

"But keep blaming the evil white man. It's all his fault."

Oh no worries bro. I'll keep on keepin on. At least till rich people aren't mostly white. lol

"The Ottomans were kicked out of the heart of the ME in 1918. The Europeans were out by 1945, I believe. They had less than 30 years to screw everything up. Yeah, no. Imperialism has nothing to do with it. But keep blaming the evil white man. It's all his fault. "

Leaving aside the blatant and repeated military invasions/"interventions" against Iraq, Iran, Libya, Yemen, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Algeria, Syria, Lebanon, and Egypt by Western countries (and probably a bunch more that I'm forgetting about) over the last fifty years, someone of your immense historical knowledge would know that the West did not 'leave' the middle east gracefully. The borders drawn and constitutions framed by the 'departing' colonial powers were specifically designed to leave the former colonies unstable and dependent on their former masters. The borders of Iraq, for instance, were specifically designed to deny them a seaport - forcing Iraqi oil to leave the country via the British-controlled pipeline to Palestine. Lebanon was carved out of Syria specifically to create a country with a 51% Christian majority, and it's constitution was drafted to guarantee Christians control of the government - which was one of the chief causes of the Lebanese civil war in the '80s (after decades if Christian emigration and higher Muslim birth rates made the latter the clear majority). And I'm sure we're all painfully aware of how Palestine was carved up to create a Jewish State - even though a majority of the population (prior to the Nakba) in this new Jewish state were not Jewish.

Even after the imperial powers "left", their influence was still felt in just about every country. In Iran, for instance, British Petroleum still maintained complete control of Iran's oil wealth and was cheating the Iranians out of a fortune in oil revenues to which the Iranians were contractually entitled; this led the Iranians to nationalize the oil industry, resulting in the infamous 1953 coup. The Saudis have been kept in power largely with American (and, in the past, British) weapons, training, technology, and intelligence. The ruling military junta in Egypt that overthrew the democratically elected government there last year has very close ties to the US, and is the second largest recipient of American "aid". We could go on and on.

Claiming that western influence in the ME is a thing of the past is probably one of the most ridiculous claims I've ever heard in this forum.