The UN Human Rights Council voted 24-14 to urge a global ban on public defamation of religion, specifically, Islam. Now I think it is rude silliness to poke sharpened sticks at people's religion, but I was also under the impression that Human Rights involved some little items like freedom of speech. I'm real sure there are Christians who will get their panties in a knot because Islam is mentioned, even though they'd applaud this as applied to their brand of god. Fortunately this sort of short sighted stupidity doesn't make anyone do anything, it is, however, illustrative. Quite frankly if your religion is soooooo fragile that it can't withstand some ridicule your god ain't worth spit. If you want to talk to me about creators of a universe that wilt because I thumb my nose at them, I'm entirely underwhelmed. It might be fairly rude to publish a picture of Mohammed with a bomb for a penis, but it would be funny and it would make a point and if Mohammed can't take it, well, he's a pussy. Oh yeah, Christians, there are things that could be done with your god as well and be just as funny and make just as good a point. No, I wouldn't expect you to like it either. So what?
It sure isn't hard to find all kinds of political/religious stupidity to poke fun at...
Showing posts with label Islam. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Islam. Show all posts
Saturday, March 31, 2007
Sunday, January 21, 2007
Racist or Something 24
I've never watched this show. I've never watched it because I don't care to have Fox trying to scare me with fiction when I've got all this reality going on. Reality that's almost completely divorced from this show's premise.
CNN has an article up from AP about a Muslim organization, Council on American-Islamic Relations, that is quite upset with Fox and 24 for their depiction of terrorists who, this time, happen to be Muslims. I won't bother you with the show's disclaimers about using other groups, this is a thriller show with various villainous groups trying to do, I gather, very bad things to Americans. Oddly enough, the complaint isn't that the show is sensationalist crap built on tragedy and horror for the benefit of profiteering war mongers, no, the problem is that the villains are identifiable. Keeeerrriiiiipes....
No, I'm real far from being a PC sort of guy in this kind of thing, I value people by their behavior - first their actions and then their speech - so trying to get my knickers in a wad because the villains in a piece of fiction happen to belong to a group pretty similar to ones actually dedicated to harming the US is plain stupid. Fiction about gangs tends to have Hispanics followed by Blacks as the gang members, prison fiction tends to have large minority representation, oddly enough reflective of demographics. It is pointless to turn around and tell me how peaceful a religion Islam is, there are Hispanic and Black surgeons also, so what?
If these CAIR folks are serious about this, rather than fund raising, they should be actively kicking BushCo's butt. This fear and paranoia is a direct outcome of those people. OK, Fox is a piece of work for trying to capitalize on it, but what exactly were Hill Street Blues, Homicide, et al all about? I didn't notice that the influential movie Mississippi Burning had Black KKK'ers, seemed to be a bunch of white guys. Hey, anybody notice that the Democratic Party of Oregon has a Gun Owners Caucus despite the knuckle dragging GOP'ers image of firearm owners by some "liberals." You know what, there are knuckle dragging GOP gunowners and they're fair game.
Here's the point, if you belong to a group that has some bad actors it's pretty disingenuous to act as though having them portrayed as bad actors is bigoted. If you're afraid to go to the store, it's about something a heck of a lot more insidious than a TV show, like a government based on hate and fear.
CNN has an article up from AP about a Muslim organization, Council on American-Islamic Relations, that is quite upset with Fox and 24 for their depiction of terrorists who, this time, happen to be Muslims. I won't bother you with the show's disclaimers about using other groups, this is a thriller show with various villainous groups trying to do, I gather, very bad things to Americans. Oddly enough, the complaint isn't that the show is sensationalist crap built on tragedy and horror for the benefit of profiteering war mongers, no, the problem is that the villains are identifiable. Keeeerrriiiiipes....
No, I'm real far from being a PC sort of guy in this kind of thing, I value people by their behavior - first their actions and then their speech - so trying to get my knickers in a wad because the villains in a piece of fiction happen to belong to a group pretty similar to ones actually dedicated to harming the US is plain stupid. Fiction about gangs tends to have Hispanics followed by Blacks as the gang members, prison fiction tends to have large minority representation, oddly enough reflective of demographics. It is pointless to turn around and tell me how peaceful a religion Islam is, there are Hispanic and Black surgeons also, so what?
If these CAIR folks are serious about this, rather than fund raising, they should be actively kicking BushCo's butt. This fear and paranoia is a direct outcome of those people. OK, Fox is a piece of work for trying to capitalize on it, but what exactly were Hill Street Blues, Homicide, et al all about? I didn't notice that the influential movie Mississippi Burning had Black KKK'ers, seemed to be a bunch of white guys. Hey, anybody notice that the Democratic Party of Oregon has a Gun Owners Caucus despite the knuckle dragging GOP'ers image of firearm owners by some "liberals." You know what, there are knuckle dragging GOP gunowners and they're fair game.
Here's the point, if you belong to a group that has some bad actors it's pretty disingenuous to act as though having them portrayed as bad actors is bigoted. If you're afraid to go to the store, it's about something a heck of a lot more insidious than a TV show, like a government based on hate and fear.
Saturday, January 06, 2007
Have A Dog In This Fight ?
If you've been watching any news you know that Hamas and Fata are busily killing each other in Palestine, in the latest a Hamas militia surrounded the house of a Fata commander Col. Muhammad Gharib killing eight. On Wednesday 5 died, on Thursday 60 were wounded including 10 children, they're getting right with the program. Both sides promise more of the same all the while saying their guns should be pointed at the Israelis. Some miles away, in Iraq, Arabs are involved in the same occupation of whacking each other, and the reasons don't seem a lot different.
You'd think the BushCo would be able to see that far away and get some kind of realistic input. The Palestinians actually have a common enemy - Israel - and yet they'd rather shoot each other up. Neither place has any particular experience with participatory democracy and even less with the concept of compromise and the results play themselves out on a daily basis. Their political solutions are at the business end of a bullet, or bomb. In Iraq we've exchanged a bloody minded despot for the tyranny of violence as politics by supposedly represented constituents, Palestine's methodology. I'm sure that tracing the course of frustrated aspirations and the history of violent oppression and resistance makes some of their patterns understandable and throw in their theocratic tendencies to get an outcome that's almost inevitiable. Why it is, then, that the Neocons and BushCo couldn't see today's Iraq barreling down the track?
It is not in the least racist or bigotted to state that the Arab version of Islam is theocratic in nature and by many interpretations, murderous. For the politically correct spinners of religious equality, Spain's Catholic Inquisition was theocracy at its finest, much less deal with the theocratic Crusades or - on and on. George II is a theocrat at heart and cannot see the obvious and inevitable consequences of indulging in it. Theocracy always trumps knowlege and history, it can only thrive on ignorance and superstition. There is no place within history that those qualifiers do not also result in muderous behavior. Be under no illusion that the versions of Islam in operation in the Middle East are somehow more debased than the vile versions of Chritianity practiced by US White Supremacists or some of the "fundamentalist" Christian Right, what they do not have is the power structure to indulge their fantasies.
Squealing, "unfair religious bigotry" at me is stupid, I will state unequivocally that the actual words spoken by these religions founders might actually be the basis for a much improved life. The problem lies with the politicization of their messages, many of the Books of the New Testament are nothing more than political power texts as are many of the passages surrounding the Koran. As these churches achieved political power their essential messages became perverted by the necessities of maintaining and enhancing that political power. There is a reason for a fence between secular and spiritual, that fence protects both but primarily the spiritual. I defy anyone to take the actual quotes of Jesus Christ and use them to back the anger and agenda of the Christian Right.
The deliberate cynical usage of the politics of religiosity by BushCo should have educated them in its propensity for mindless fanaticism, it should only have been a short step to understanding the brutality of its operation as government in the Middle East. The Sauds are family friends of George II, he kisses them and hold hands with them, their experiences with the Wahabbi sect surely are not secrets from him. Suppressed, ignorant, superstitious theocrats are dangerous murderous thugs. Why, exactly, we have a dog in any of these fights is beyond me.
You'd think the BushCo would be able to see that far away and get some kind of realistic input. The Palestinians actually have a common enemy - Israel - and yet they'd rather shoot each other up. Neither place has any particular experience with participatory democracy and even less with the concept of compromise and the results play themselves out on a daily basis. Their political solutions are at the business end of a bullet, or bomb. In Iraq we've exchanged a bloody minded despot for the tyranny of violence as politics by supposedly represented constituents, Palestine's methodology. I'm sure that tracing the course of frustrated aspirations and the history of violent oppression and resistance makes some of their patterns understandable and throw in their theocratic tendencies to get an outcome that's almost inevitiable. Why it is, then, that the Neocons and BushCo couldn't see today's Iraq barreling down the track?
It is not in the least racist or bigotted to state that the Arab version of Islam is theocratic in nature and by many interpretations, murderous. For the politically correct spinners of religious equality, Spain's Catholic Inquisition was theocracy at its finest, much less deal with the theocratic Crusades or - on and on. George II is a theocrat at heart and cannot see the obvious and inevitable consequences of indulging in it. Theocracy always trumps knowlege and history, it can only thrive on ignorance and superstition. There is no place within history that those qualifiers do not also result in muderous behavior. Be under no illusion that the versions of Islam in operation in the Middle East are somehow more debased than the vile versions of Chritianity practiced by US White Supremacists or some of the "fundamentalist" Christian Right, what they do not have is the power structure to indulge their fantasies.
Squealing, "unfair religious bigotry" at me is stupid, I will state unequivocally that the actual words spoken by these religions founders might actually be the basis for a much improved life. The problem lies with the politicization of their messages, many of the Books of the New Testament are nothing more than political power texts as are many of the passages surrounding the Koran. As these churches achieved political power their essential messages became perverted by the necessities of maintaining and enhancing that political power. There is a reason for a fence between secular and spiritual, that fence protects both but primarily the spiritual. I defy anyone to take the actual quotes of Jesus Christ and use them to back the anger and agenda of the Christian Right.
The deliberate cynical usage of the politics of religiosity by BushCo should have educated them in its propensity for mindless fanaticism, it should only have been a short step to understanding the brutality of its operation as government in the Middle East. The Sauds are family friends of George II, he kisses them and hold hands with them, their experiences with the Wahabbi sect surely are not secrets from him. Suppressed, ignorant, superstitious theocrats are dangerous murderous thugs. Why, exactly, we have a dog in any of these fights is beyond me.
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