Israel-Hamas War 2023

[OttoVonBismarck]

OvB says he hates all Muslism and Palestinians should be deported from Israel to make room fro the Jewish population.

I never said this--and this is where I write you off. This is at least the 2nd time you blatantly lied in this thread.

I now assume the following about you:

1. You literally hate Jews, and are an antisemitic scumbag
2. You are happy about the 10/7 attack, probably gleefully laughing to reports of Israeli women being raped and murdered and babies being killed
3. You are a monstrous genocidal piece of shit who wants to see all the Jews in Israel in Muslim death camps

[Crazy_Ivan80]

Islamophobia is a word invented purely for the purpose of browbeating people who are opposed to Islam, regardless of what form that opposition takes as long as it is non-violent, into submission. It's no better than calling everyone you disagree with a fascist, nazi, communist, racist or any other epithet that'll shut down the conversation.

[OttoVonBismarck]

Islamophobia is a word invented purely for the purpose of browbeating people who are opposed to Islam, regardless of what form that opposition takes as long as it is non-violent, into submission. It's no better than calling everyone you disagree with a fascist, nazi, communist, racist or any other epithet that'll shut down the conversation.

Yep, it is an attempt to delegitimize opposition to an ideology, Islam is an ideology. It is not a race. It is not a gender. Beliefs can be rejected and opposed. The opposite of that is a world in which free expression is disallowed when it offends other people's personal beliefs.

[Admiral Yi]

If we imagine a silly theoretical where everything in the middle east is exactly the same except the majority have a non Muslim religion do you really think everyone would be cool with it?

If I imagine a Middle East where everyone is another religion but they still practice genital mutilation, make their women wear tents, engage in honor killings, don't let their daughters go to school, stone gays and adulterers to death and engage in a high level of political violence I would not be cool with that hypothetical religion either.

[Razgovory]

If the Palestinians were white Evangelical Christians my opinions would likely be similar.  I doubt either many of on the right or the far left would have the same opinion though.  Those people who take up the Palestinian struggle in the name of fighting white supremacy would probably have a different view point this particular decolonization struggle.  Ditto for the religious right in America.

[Josquius]

"Islamophobia isn't racist because Islam isn't a race" - such a transparent dodge.

Islam isn't a race, full stop. That isn't a dodge, it's a simple fucking fact. The entire rest of your post is predicated on you posting things you know are factually untrue. This is the typical leftist playbook on Islam apologia.

 
Projection, number one in the hard right playbook
Also dodging actual replies that put you in an awkward position. That's in there too.

Also. Forgot a bit - a religion with a thousand years of history and many millions of followers does deserve some level of basic respect where that cult formed last Tuesday with 10 followers does not. Pretty common sense why this is so.

Could you elaborate?

In what way?
If you're going to say 12 guys on the street corner shouting about the sausage god are lunatics that's fair enough. No need to look into what they actually believe there.
If you're going to make a sweeping attack on a billion people....Yeah. You should really check your facts first. Lots of very decent people being swept up in that.

Also in terms of harmonious relations on earth- 12 people being upset for being dismissed as crazy is quite a different thing to shitting on a billion like so. Even for 100% proven fact vile murderous dictatorships there is a basic level of diplomatic respect countries use that doesn't apply to individual psychopaths. And that's not what we're talking about here.

If we imagine a silly theoretical where everything in the middle east is exactly the same except the majority have a non Muslim religion do you really think everyone would be cool with it?

If I imagine a Middle East where everyone is another religion but they still practice genital mutilation, make their women wear tents, engage in honor killings, don't let their daughters go to school, stone gays and adulterers to death and engage in a high level of political violence I would not be cool with that hypothetical religion either.

Yes.
(Also irrelevant but- I'm pretty sure genital mutilation is more an East African than Middle Eastern thing)

[Gups]

I don't really care who shot first because obviously neither side was going to not resume hostilities and both would have an interest in claiming the other side resumed first.

My original point was about maintaining a veneer of impartiality. Which the Guardian has lost nearly all interest in when it comes to this, and they are making me question why I bother reading them between such reporting, the Owen Jones and Simon Jenkins publications, and tbe one per four hours pan-Muslim wailings published.

Mainly I'm not sure what is a better UK outlet to look at.

The Times is vastly better but you have to pay. Ditto the FT and the Economist.

[OttoVonBismarck]

Just read the Daily Mail, it is Britain's most popular paper.

[Valmy]

Islamophobia is a word invented purely for the purpose of browbeating people who are opposed to Islam, regardless of what form that opposition takes as long as it is non-violent, into submission. It's no better than calling everyone you disagree with a fascist, nazi, communist, racist or any other epithet that'll shut down the conversation.

Really it should be Muslimophobia because often people just hate them for what they look like or what their culture is, it doesn't even matter if the person is religious or not.

My problem with Islam is the apostasy thing. We have a big problem in this country already with enforced shunning and persecution of people for apostasy. We have a huge LGBT youth homeless problem because fucking religious nuts disown their kids and shit. And here we have this religion that not just puts social pressure on you to shun and persecute apostates but has a long tradition of state mandated persecution up to and including the death penalty. Now granted since the late 19th century Muslims have backed off this a bit, but not because Islam doesn't demand you persecute apostates but because Muslims find it distasteful. This reflects very well on Muslims but not so much on Islam. And even today we have 62% of Malaysian Muslims saying that apostates should get the death penalty. And that is the death penalty. I mean we are not even talking about disowning children, shunning friends and relatives, firing people from their jobs and all the usual disgusting way apostates are treated by religions.

And bare in mind Islam is a religion you can be born into. So you really have no choice. You are brought in through your parents and social pressure and then compelled to stay...perhaps even through legal force. And it was almost universally this way, and considered a good thing, from the 7th century until the late 19th century.

So yeah. Not too happy to see another religion with that kind of culty background spreading through the western world. But I just have to hope most Muslims are better than their religion, and to be fair to them they seem to be outside of some specific places like Pakistan, Afghanistan, Malaysia, Palestine, Jordan, and Egypt. Granted those are not exactly tiny and insignificant Muslim countries.

Yes the 58.7% of all the Muslim Palestinians want to legally murder anybody who leaves Islam. Further reason why I don't trust them. Oh but maybe not all of them support Hamas so it's ok. Fuck those kids who don't want to be part of their parents religion. And I bet a lot more are in favor of persecution of Apostates that stop short of actual murder. So yeah if Palestine wants my support they have to assure me they will not create a state that is going to vote in those sorts of laws. Palestine being distinct from Palestinians, who of course I support the human rights of. Palestine and it institutions? Not so much.

[Crazy_Ivan80]

Islamophobia is a word invented purely for the purpose of browbeating people who are opposed to Islam, regardless of what form that opposition takes as long as it is non-violent, into submission. It's no better than calling everyone you disagree with a fascist, nazi, communist, racist or any other epithet that'll shut down the conversation.

Really it should be Muslimophobia because often people just hate them for what they look like or what their culture is, it doesn't even matter if the person is religious or not.

My problem with Islam is the apostasy thing. We have a big problem in this country already with enforced shunning and persecution of people for apostasy. We have a huge LGBT youth homeless problem because fucking religious nuts disown their kids and shit. And here we have this religion that not just puts social pressure on you to shun and persecute apostates but has a long tradition of state mandated persecution up to and including the death penalty. Now granted since the late 19th century Muslims have backed off this a bit, but not because Islam doesn't demand you persecute apostates but because Muslims find it distasteful. This reflects very well on Muslims but not so much on Islam. And even today we have 62% of Malaysian Muslims saying that apostates should get the death penalty. And that is the death penalty. I mean we are not even talking about disowning children, shunning friends and relatives, firing people from their jobs and all the usual disgusting way apostates are treated by religions.

And bare in mind Islam is a religion you can be born into. So you really have no choice. You are brought in through your parents and social pressure and then compelled to stay...perhaps even through legal force. And it was almost universally this way, and considered a good thing, from the 7th century until the late 19th century.

So yeah. Not too happy to see another religion with that kind of culty background spreading through the western world. But I just have to hope most Muslims are better than their religion, and to be fair to them they seem to be outside of some specific places like Pakistan, Afghanistan, Malaysia, Palestine, Jordan, and Egypt. Granted those are not exactly tiny and insignificant Muslim countries.

Yes the 58.7% of all the Muslim Palestinians want to legally murder anybody who leaves Islam. Further reason why I don't trust them. Oh but maybe not all of them support Hamas so it's ok. Fuck those kids who don't want to be part of their parents religion. And I bet a lot more are in favor of persecution of Apostates that stop short of actual murder. So yeah if Palestine wants my support they have to assure me they will not create a state that is going to vote in those sorts of laws. Palestine being distinct from Palestinians, who of course I support the human rights of. Palestine and it institutions? Not so much.

don't disagree.
It's one of the reason why the useful idiots that enable this retrograde behaviour in the west annoy the frick out of me, especially since these people often come from groups or parties that in the not so distant past agitated vehemently against the excesses of christianity and for separation of church and state. Now they refuse to do the same to free the newcomers from the clutches of a suffocating system, and suddenly that separation isn't important anymore either.

That said: I wouldn't want to give the secret atheists, agnosts, ex-muslims and so in the Maghreb and Near-East dinner, as I've got a feeling there's a lot of them. But that's just a suspicion I have based on what a number of people from the region have let slip.

[Josquius]

You fail to understand why people oppose islamophobia.

If you want Muslims to step away from ultra conservatism and all it's attached shit then screaming bloody murder at them and putting them into a siege mentality Is not a smart approach

Rather you provide them with opportunities and choice. You let them make their own way in the world and don't force them into "ghettos".

The useful idiots are the white far right. Islamic extremists absolutely love the far right and Islamophobia as it delivers previously moderate Muslims right into their hands.
A comedy scene but it really does sum up how they think -
https://youtu.be/QRx7ZqcKn0o?si=lduAM7DEr30An4sG

It's the left with our ideas of tolerance and diversity that really get their beards in a twist.  We represent everything they detest... And provide a genuine threat to their ability to form a powerbase.

It's not neo nazis screaming Mohammed is a paedo that are going to defeat Islamic fundamentalism.
Its pop music, skinny jeans, and the ability to just be who you want to be.

[OttoVonBismarck]

Just the kind of stuff viper / josq defend:

US official: Hamas not freeing women hostages so they won't tell 'what happened to them'

US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller suggests that Hamas is holding onto a number of female Israeli hostages because it does not want them to testify about what they experienced in captivity.

"The fact that they continue to hold women hostages, the fact that they continue to hold children hostages, just the fact that it seems one of the reasons they don't want to turn women over they've been holding hostage, and the reason this pause fell apart, is they don't want those women to be able to talk about what happened to them during their time in custody," says Miller, in response to a question from a reporter about growing evidence of Hamas rape and sexual abuse on October 7.

"There is very little that I would put beyond Hamas when it comes to its treatment of civilians, and particularly its treatment of women," he adds.

A young Israeli woman seen on October 7 in Gaza being taken captive while the seat of her sweatpants was covered in blood remains a hostage in Gaza.

[Razgovory]

If you want Muslims to step away from ultra conservatism and all it's attached shit then screaming bloody murder at them and putting them into a siege mentality Is not a smart approach

Would this apply Christian conservatives as well?

[Razgovory]

Just the kind of stuff viper / josq defend:

US official: Hamas not freeing women hostages so they won't tell 'what happened to them'

US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller suggests that Hamas is holding onto a number of female Israeli hostages because it does not want them to testify about what they experienced in captivity.

"The fact that they continue to hold women hostages, the fact that they continue to hold children hostages, just the fact that it seems one of the reasons they don't want to turn women over they've been holding hostage, and the reason this pause fell apart, is they don't want those women to be able to talk about what happened to them during their time in custody," says Miller, in response to a question from a reporter about growing evidence of Hamas rape and sexual abuse on October 7.

"There is very little that I would put beyond Hamas when it comes to its treatment of civilians, and particularly its treatment of women," he adds.

A young Israeli woman seen on October 7 in Gaza being taken captive while the seat of her sweatpants was covered in blood remains a hostage in Gaza.

 Violence in everyday behaviour, violence against the past that is emptied of all substance, violence against the future, for the colonial regime presents itself as necessarily eternal. We see, therefore, that the colonized people, caught in a web of a three-dimensional violence, a meeting point of multiple, diverse, repeated, cumulative violences, are soon logically confronted by the problem of ending the colonial regime by any means necessary. —Frantz Fanon, Alienation and Freedom: part 3, chapter 22, "Why we use violence".

[Barrister]

Violence in everyday behaviour, violence against the past that is emptied of all substance, violence against the future, for the colonial regime presents itself as necessarily eternal. We see, therefore, that the colonized people, caught in a web of a three-dimensional violence, a meeting point of multiple, diverse, repeated, cumulative violences, are soon logically confronted by the problem of ending the colonial regime by any means necessary. —Frantz Fanon, Alienation and Freedom: part 3, chapter 22, "Why we use violence".

Some believe that, yes.

It's also useful however to remember the successful efforts of activists such as Gandhi, Nelson Mandela or Martin Luther King who all preached non-violence.