(March 13, 2016 at 6:48 am)AtlasS33 Wrote:(March 11, 2016 at 6:52 pm)Pandæmonium Wrote: Still, I don't think anyone is suffering from the delusion that the west is perfect, just a million times better than anything else that most of the rest of the world has managed to produce (in terms of personal, political and indeed religious freedoms).
I don't know anyone in the west who would genuinely wish to live somewhere else in the world where they would have less freedoms than they have now.
Edit: sorry I've fixed your image above and it made me chuckle.
The thing that makes me object, is that the west got its peace of mind through messing up the countries of others. All backward dictators -across the Middle East- are supported by western countries; Saudi Arabia is one example.
Thanks for fixing the tags
Brian37 (from post #13 and up we go)
Throughout the Middle East, the natives have an acceptance issue. The culture is so rough, the more you dwell into the Arabian peninsula the more that this roughness increase; thankfully I grew up with lots of bruises, but I don't want to inflict pain on others, neither do I want to see people suppressed because of their faith.
That roughness though, crawled and found its way into religion; Sunni/Shia Islam are the "holly protection" that cover and shield the rough Middle Eastern culture, abusing others became a religion.
I began to understand that a lot of bigotry do come from religious people. I cannot deny that. Christians, Jews, Sunni Muslims, Shia Twelvers, does it matter? actually it's the same smell, same bigotry, same insults, same insanity.
Quote:Yes and no. Yes there is lots to be angry at bigots for, and every war America has been involved in since WW2 has been a stalemate and quagmire that really ends up doing nothing but wasting money and getting civilians and soldiers needlessly killed.
But it still does not justify the horrible interpretations of the Quran and Hadiths that have even Sunni's and Shiites killing each other.Two wrongs don't make a right, and again, between the east and the west, the west is still a much more open society with many more protections of minorities and free speech. No we are NOT perfect, but we also are not run on one sect of one religion.
It doesn't justify it; you are right.
What I'm trying to do in this forum, is to open people's eyes to the bigotry of both parties.
I suffered a lot from Sunnies/Wahhabies. I lost a lot. I'm young, but don't think I lived a normal "teenage" life or even a "normal childhood". But my torturer's had western protection at all times, if I ever revolt I get burned, the hand is Arabic, but the spear is western. So I ended up looking down upon both.
Sunnies & Shia -especially twelver shia- must be exposed. The bad folks in the west would never have had all this influence in the M.E, without the support and acceptance of the NATIVE BIGOTS.
Never did the mistake of one party, justify the atrocities of another.
MrNoMorePropaganda
Add the racism of "Levant Arabs" against dark skinned people to the list, actually Syrians, Lebanese and Palistinians -and truth be told- are one of the most racist societies against dark skinned people.
Quote:I t hink Atlas has every right to be angry. But this forum is the wrong place to vent that angry. Most people here are very educated on the issues and already know how bad, and hypocritical, the West, particularly the United States can be.
I do invest my time here, because many people here "ACTUALLY" think and read what is written; I do have a theory though, that the more we become distant from Islam, the more our world becomes a mess. I think it worth a display in front of critics.
robvalue
It makes me sleep at night, sometimes I feel isolated.
Thinking that there are different people is something I must learn to practice, even if it was so hard.
Rhythm
But the irony is that the Quran is truly the key to solve all humanity's social, psychological & political problems .
vorlon13
Conquest did happen and take place; but the rules of the game changed and nobody "occupies" land with infantry anymore. It's the age of capitalism, the wars America took were always economical, the real invasion was economical; thus virtual; thus it's so rare to find people who actually see it..
The type of conquest that makes a useless piece of paper ($) to dominate all currencies.
As others have said here, you are preaching to the choir.
Again, the idea of religion itself is the root cause. It isn't that you can rid the world of it by force, but more inso that humans don't want to face the fact that it causes humans to be divided. It still remains however, when you compare the East to the West we still do a much better job keeping different religions civil.
Human cruelty is not a patent owned by one label, no. And no religion in the world deserves to be scrutiny free, not Jews not Christians not Islam, not even atheist(not a religion, but still).
Our species evolved to form groups, and unfortunately we attach labels that really amount to nothing more than excuses to gain control over our environments. Safety in numbers allows our species to have more opportunity at resources and more opportunity at producing offspring. The problem with ALL religions worldwide is this mundane reality gets turned into a comic book reflection of what we do naturally, and our species ignorance of this allows us to treat the "other" as a sub species.
Now again having said that, instead of asking for the same protection you say Jews have, what we should all value is common law in that of non violence and arrest anyone of any label when they incite violence. But again, that is a matter of local secular law, global politics is much more difficult but still needs to work more to those ends.
It still remains there is far less freedom in the East even between Sunnis and Shiites, which is just as bad and oppressive as Kim Jong Un. The fact you are here making this post without fear of anyone here is testimony of the value of an open society. There is no polite way to say that the East simply is nowhere near as open.
Nobody should deny the needless deaths the Iraq war caused. Nobody should deny the bigotry our right wingers sell. Nobody should deny the holocaust or the genocide of Native Americans or Slavery. But again, you still have it better living in the west than you would in far to much of the middle east. Atheists and gays and Christians and minority Muslims depending where they are stuck in the East have much more to fear than those living in the west.
It is also why when Christians and Jews and atheists in the west complain about getting picked on I tell them the same thing. It sucks that people offend you, nobody likes being picked on. Civility isn't about never offending or never getting offended, but how you respond in the face of those situations.
This guy was an atheist, but ask me if I give a shit. He deserves to go to prison and rot in prison until he dies. Violence is never an answer under common law.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2015/.../23514293/
And this asshole murdered 3 Puerto Ricans because they didn't speak English
https://www.rawstory.com/2016/03/you-guy...k-english/
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/01/us/whi....html?_r=0
In the west while we have the right to pick on anything and everything and each other, we don't get to be a mob rule. The East still has not caught up with the west politically in this concept of government neutrality. AGAIN that does not give Israel a pass, they've done some shitty things too. But not because they are Jews. Islamic states have supported shitty things. And America has done shitty things.
It isn't that humans are incapable of compassion, it is that we are far too tribal and local and we don't understand that we are the same species and that the earth is the only home all 7 billion of us have.