[BREAKING NEWS] Egyptians Rip Down US Embassy Flag!

Your idea of "being the bigger man" involves bending over backwards for islam, allowing sharia courts, banning piggy banks , winnie the pooh (piglet), ham sandwiches in school lunches, etc. etc...

Talk about an out and out straw man sentence.

Get the fuck outta here with that shit, Granny! The Aryans, like the muslims, are lunatics just like everyone with an extreme ideology (kinda like some lefties on WF).

Your hair's a little messed up there.

The embassy security should have used non-lethal force to disperse the crowd (rubber bullets, tear gas, etc). But if a flag was the only casualty here, I'd say this wasn't that big of a deal.

While I agree that this has nothing to do with the Arab Spring, my concern is less about U.S's favorability in the ME, and more about the fact that so many (so VERY many) of these people react to the slightest perceived insult with deadly violence.

Whilst I wholeheartedly agree that any rational person would view these actions as well over and above a justifiable response to such a video and think there are two things to consider.

Firstly, religion by default is pretty irrational. I think it's important to understand a bit about how offensive depictions of Mohammad can be seen by Muslims.....especially poor and illiterate muslims who, frankly, know nothing better than their indoctination into fake dogma.

Secondly, as has been pointed out, there has been decades of anti-US sentiment building up over the years. Anyone who doesn't grasp why so many people in the Middle East and Islamic world perceive hate against America and see it as one huge invasive meddler in Middle Eastern affirs needs their head checked.This is not just limited to a reaction to a youtube clip, it's things like this and stuff like Terry Jones's Koran burning that are just being used as catalyst excuses to have a go at American.

The problem with instances like this is everyone in the west sits around and just says "oh, this is a savage reaction to just a video", and while that may be true, it's said as if it's the sole motivator. People over here need to be realistic and accept that if you interfere in the affairs of other countries, or back certain regimes in favour of other governments or groups, then there will always be a proportion of people in these regions who build up significant resentment and as just itching for an excuse to get back at us..

Well, adherants of this particular religion seem to be resorting to violence a lot more than the rest lately....and it's not just the poor and illiterate ones that are doing it.

Yeah. I get that they're pissed at us...but for all the violence they visit on outsiders, they seem to do it even more often to themselves.

Right. They get pissed when we meddle, and they get pissed when we sit by and do nothing while a dictator beats the crap out of them. I'm more and more inclined to believe we should be damned for what didn't do from here on out.

God, so many of you just can't get past the idea of a "they" can you? Like all two billion of them are one huge singular entity with collective thought. How do you know that the "they" who resent America is the same "they" who wants American support? Or are they like the Borg collective?

Take, for instance, the student protests in Tehran in 2009. By your logic, the young students campagining against their regime were also Islamic fanatics who were, essentially, having a go at themselves. It's a bit like saying that a Catholic who condemns a paedophile priest is, by default, a padeophile themselves who supports paedophilia simply because they are a follower of the same religion.

The Middle East has 400million people living in it, the majority of which are muslim. Are you really suggesting that they all have exactly the same attitude towards America? That hundreds of millions of them are carrying out these attacks? Come on, that's Kindergarten level stupidity.

Wow, trying to use semantics to dodge the point he was making - how pathetic.

You're willing to characterize two billion people based on the behaviors of a few. By the same rationale, it's perfectly legitimate to judge you as an Aryan Nation sympathizer. You've probably got more in common with Richard Butler than the average Muslim has with bin Laden. The analogy is appropriate.

But the Black Doves of this world, who have their own measure of belligerence (as witness their "nuke 'em back to the Stone Age" rhetoric), can't accept that it's really so simple. Impasse.

It has been pointed out many times--and needs to be pointed out--that not all Muslims, and not even a majority of them, are prone to violence. It's just that ten million Muslims behaving themselves don't make as much news or cause as many incidents as 100 violent Muslims.

Nevertheless, anyone who fails to realize that Islam as an institution is a source of trouble these days is simply burying their head in the sand. Pretending that Islam as an institution is not a danger to world peace today is like claiming that Christianity was not a danger to the world in the late Middle Ages.

That does not mean that all Christians in the Middle Ages were conducting witch hunts, participating in the Inquisition, or using the force of arms to keep the people in line and thus keep the money rolling in. In fact, a majority of them were not. There were certainly a large number of peoople who were sincere in their faith and whose primary goal was to live their faith honestly and try to demonstrate the love of Jesus to those around them. By definition, they were not the ones causing trouble.

But Europe and Western civilization did not advance until Christianity as an institution was broken. In the same way, there is a major problem today with Islam as an institution.

The biggest problem I have with most people's take on Islam today is that they fail to recognize one or the other of these two truths. Either they lump all Muslims together and blame the Muslim religion itself, or else they constantly point out the (true) fact that most Muslims are not violent extremists while ignoring the danger that the institution poses today.

Each of these viewpoints is as dangerously ignorant as the other. When people get murdered regularly because someone drew a cartoon criticizing Islam, so that mobs attack anyone who is even remotely connected with that person (even if it is only a question of being of the same nationality), there is a real problem. That sort of thing is happening all too often because the institution of Islam has a hold on whole societies, so that people do not get free information, alternative points of view, and a chance to freely evaluate their beliefs. Putting your head in the sand, repeating that it is not all or even most Muslims, and pretending that the problem is not with the institution of Islam itself, is not a rational viewpoint.

Alternatively, pretending that the problem is with all the adherents to the religion (or, worse yet, with all adherents to all religions), regardless of whether or not they have ever committed any violence in the name of that religion, and advocating wiping them all out or, at the very least, preventing them from following their religious beliefs, is also not a rational viewpoint. The transformation of Western society did not require eliminating all Christians, but only Christianity as an institution. In the same way, the solution is not to "wipe out all Muslims" but to see the power (financial and political) of the institution broken.

I admit, however, that I do not see any good ways of doing that at present...

If the roles were reversed and Black Dove had been born Muslim in the Middle East, he would probably be out there committing these violent acts (given the similarities in extremist personality types).

I dunno. He strikes me as being all talk. He'd be the guy at the back of the crowd in every demonstration, though.

Oh come on! By "they", I was clearly talking about the "proportion of people in these regions" that you referenced. If "They" is taboo in this discussion to the point that anyone using it in any context whatsoever makes "them" a close minded simpleton, then how should I refer to two or more people?

Religion is a dangerous institution, full stop. The attempt to make out one to have evolved to a state of utter harmlessness over another is laughable.

Christianity is slowing dying in the West, to be replaced by the apathetic, agnostic of atheists. Well, at least in Europe anyhow. Could it be that the breaking down of the institution of Christianity is actually the first step of humanity evolving beyond dogma?

Similar to the suggestion made in a couple of other threads recently to put the leaders of warring nations in a room together and let them fight it out: We should arrange for BD and MF to each be locked in a room with one of their al Qaeda counterparts. Let the games begin.

"The people who perpetrated these attacks" seems quite easy. To me it appears you weren't just talking about just these attackers though, but all people in the region. If I am wrong, then apologies.

A vast amount of people are agressors in varying degress. You'd have to get rid of a whole lot of people!

Lock 'em in a room together. No food, no water, nothing until they either kill each other or reach a detente. Either way, they're not causing trouble in the outside world.

It would have also been inacurate, because I wasn't just talking about people who have resorted to violence. I was addressing the people you were talking about...who are mad at us for meddling. Being mad and being violent are not the same thing.

I was responding to a post you made, therefore I was talking about the same groups of people that you brought up.

I realize you've probably forgotten to take your medicine this morning, so let me help you out.

All muslims are members of Islam.

Black Dove has NEVER been a member of the Aryan Brotherhood.

Got it?





I didn't think so.