Questions Muslims don't like to answer

ALMOST a quarter of British Muslims say the 7/7 bombings can be justified because of the Government's support for the war on terror, according to an opinion poll.​

A quarter is not a majority and it does note that 48 percent strongly disagree. In addition agreeing or disagreeing with the justification of something is not the same as being willing to act out upon those beliefs.

What is more telling is the opinion split between age groups with Muslims under 24 being twice as likely to agree than older Muslims. To me this raises the question of what is happening to radicalize the youth or if this is just young people being more excitable and more prone to knee jerk opinions compared to their older counterparts who are more thoughtful and less prone to bluster -- especially when answering a survey about something they might not have put much thought into.

Many pro-lifers believe the abortion clinic bombings were justified, but would never consider caring out such acts themselves.

Is there a problem with violence and terrorism increasing in the world? Yes there is. Should we be concerned by the results of the survey you linked to? Yes we should. However, even by that survey it is still a minority of Muslims who thought that the terrorist attacks on 7/7 were justified to some extent or another and this has been my point all along. The majority of Muslims (even many of those who thought the 7/7 attack was justified) pose no threat of actually supporting, facilitating or carrying out a terrorist attack. What would have been really nice to have seen in that article was the exact question that was asked and the complete results of the survey.

The fact remains that even by the standard you want to deploy for what is terrorism, only a small minority of Muslims actively support (e.g. financially, logistics, etc.) or carry out terrorist acts. The vast majority prefer to do as we do speak out using peaceful means or simply complain amongst themselves. Speaking out and venting opinions isn't a real concern other than it indicates a need to listen and work towards a solution. It is the carrying out or providing support for violent acts is bad. What is also a concern is preaching hatred and intolerance for another group. Is it any worse for a Muslim cleric to preach intolerance towards Christians than A Christian preacher to preach intolerance towards Muslims? In my book there is no difference and plenty of clergy on within both religions that do it. Lord knows the sermons at the Assembly of God I attended preached intolerance against "false" religions, homosexuals and "evillutionsts" (misspelling intended) on a regular basis.

You say you are only trying to make people aware of a problem, but really all too often that is a euphemism for justifying persecution of another group. Several times people have asked you what your solution would be to the problem you proclaim to which you give evasive answers. Evasive answers are an even bigger concern.

Whether you or right or I are right about the issue with terrorism and Islam if we want help move this world in a safer more peaceful direction where we do not have to be in fear of terrorist attacks, there is only one solution. We MUST speak out in support of tolerance and we MUST reach out our hand in friendship to moderate Muslims. We can not break the cycle of violence until someone starts to try and bridge the divide that causes the animosity between Western and Middle Eastern cultures and between the Christian and Muslim religions. Maybe you and I can't do much as individuals about the Middle East as a whole, but we can certainly build goodwill with our Muslim neighbors in our own communities. The only option is a continually spiraling cycle of violence, unless you are proposing some sort of "final solution" which I personally find utterly repulsive to even think about.

Terrorism has become a convenient excuse to spread fear and hatred about Muslims by those who would eagerly persecute them even if 9/11, 7/7 and the Madrid bombings hadn't taken place. This fear and hatred is being spread only to help make it easier to justify usurping the civil rights of certain immigrant groups or to justify closing our borders to people who's only "crime" is to have been simply born into the "wrong" religion.

Terrorism has also become a convenient tool for various governments (our own included) to use to scare the masses and subvert our civil liberties. Do no fly lists truly make us safer? Does snooping through our library records make us safer? Does secretly going through phone records with no congressional or judicial oversight make us safer? At what expense to our civil liberties?

According to a 1999 report in the British Medical Journal 34,000 people die each year in the United States because of gun violence or gun accidents (http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/318/7192/1160). A more conservative figure from an ABC News article (http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/WhosCounting/story?id=1560771) states that last year 12,000 people were killed in the United States "by hot-headed people with guns" not terrorists. According to the U.S Department of Justice (http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/pdf/fidc9397.pdf) between 1993 and 1997 there were a total of 78,620 homicides committed with a firearm. It would certainly appear to any reasonable person that firearms pose a much bigger threat to one's life than terrorists I mean even by the most conservative figure I just quoted, 12,000 people a year are killed by a gun owner.

Obviously gun owners pose a very serious threat to our safety, gun owners are dangerous and we must do something about them just look at all the people they are killing each year (I'm only trying to raise awareness). Should we ban all guns? Should we usurp the Constitutional rights of this group? I mean obviously they are dangerous look at how many American's get killed by them each year.

Personally speaking I feel much safer walking past any Mosque in America than I do in my own woods during hunting season. For crying out loud our neighbors have to paint the word "COW" on the side of their cattle in bright orange paint for hunting season.

Each year around 17,000 people die in the Untied States from accidents involving drunk drivers (http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/pdf/nrd-30/NCSA/RNotes/2005/809904.pdf, http://www.dot.gov/affairs/nhtsa3203.htm). Even considering 2001, more people die on U.S. roads because of drunk drivers than die world wide from terrorism. This isn't to belittle terrorism, but to try to put some perspective on things.

Is terrorism a concern? Yes it is, but the whole thing is blown so far out of proportion that we can not even have a reasonable and rational discourse on this issue. The simple fact of the matter is that in the long run the best way to reduce terrorism isn't to spread hatred about Muslims. In the long run the best way to reduce terrorism is to try and teach tolerance and to reach out a hand of friendship to our moderate Muslim neighbors. Also more lives could be saved each year in this country by simply taking all that fire and brimstone that is spewed against Muslims and redirecting that anger and energy into something constructive like teaching better gun safety (and maybe the difference between a cow and a deer) and working to keep drunk drivers off our roads.

We must never promote anything that could usurp or suspend any constitutional rights for anyone in this country this includes the first and second amendments. A lot of lives could be saved by banning guns and getting all guns off our streets, but for some reason I'd prefer to take the risk being shot by a really stupid hunter than to consider suspending any civil liberties.

Here are some really good quotes by Thomas Jefferson on this issue:

All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.
....
Those Who Would Sacrifice Liberty for Security Deserve Neither.
.....
Peace and friendship with all mankind is our wisest policy, and I wish we may be permitted to pursue it.​

 

I'd completely agree. I've had many Jewish and Muslim friends and none ever tried to evangelize me about their religion, but I've had more than my fair of complete strangers walk up to me, intrude into my personal space and then ask "have you been saved?" I've always wanted to respond "who the hell are you and what god damn business is it of yours," but I'm too darn polite. It seems like every Baptist I meet tries to invite me to their church and some don't give up like I'm going to change my mind the 20th time they ask. I once had a dormitory roommate from some fringe Christian religion (I don't remember which one) that would try to preach to me each night. That got old really fast.

And here I always thought that man created God in his image? Well at least it seems that way sometimes.

 

No one has argued majority. In fact, it dismisses your lame platitude of "tiny minority." Once again, twisting words of others to cover up your own shortcomings.

It appears you have no idea what Jefforson, or Franklin for that matter, said or didn't say. This is a misquote of Benjamin Franklin, often cited incorrectly by those who want terrorists to have every opportunity possible to conduct their missions without being caught.

You attribute "Those Who Would Sacrifice Liberty for Security Deserve Neither" to Jefferson.

The actual quote that Franklin is attributed for, is:

Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.

The version that appears on the Statue of Liberty's pedestal reads:
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.

However, there is strong evidence he never said such in the first place.

What Benjamin Franklin did say was:

We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.

Stop abusing our founding fathers to suggest they would approve of and defend terrorists.

 

Well, we are commanded to go a tell everyone about Christ and understanding some will be offended. But look at the bright side, you have your head still attached to the rest of your body. Christians don't force you to accept Christ or join a religion (at least not suppose to!)

This is the biggest problem with any religion - when man tries to make god in his image then we have a false god. God is God and I am not... if I made a god I would make him like me or just be me. Why make a god that makes me have to change?

 

I'm sorry, but any information on Wikipedia is hardly strong evidence. If I wanted to I could go in there and change the information to say the exact opposite.

However, that self-same page does claim that Benjamin Franklin was quoted as having said "Sell not virtue to purchase wealth, nor Liberty to purchase power." and that the quote above was merely miss attributed to him.

The phrase was used in a letter from the Pennsylvania assembly, of which both Benjamin Franklin and Richard Jackson were members, and it also states that Benjamin Franklin denied authorship of the book -save- for some letters from that assembly. It does not say which. The wikipedia page you linked to said that the full form of the quote is still under contest, so continuing the common attribution to Benjamin Franklin, while potentially incorrect, is not necessarily inappropriate.

However attributing it to Thomas Jefferson almost definitely is.

 

Then please do that, then post a link here so we can see...

 

Oh, it would be immediately changed again I'm sure. But the point is that there is no vetting of information. Anyone can make a change to the page if they feel like it, and if you hit that page between a malicious change an an attempt to 'correct' the information, you get the info from the malicious change.

And there is no guarantee that the consensus information there in the first place is correct.

This is why, I personally, do not trust Wikipedia to be reliable. About the only thing I look for there is spellings of things like mountain ranges, which I then check with a dictionary to make sure it's the right land mass, or use it's references to look for actually reliable information. The information in Wikipedia, however, I do not trust without external verification from a more reliable source.

You are free to trust in Wikipedia. I, however, and many of my acquaintances, do not, due to the lack of reliability, and the lack of credential verification for those posting information. Therefore, posting a link to Wikipedia as 'proof' is unlikely to sway those who doubt it's credibility.

 

On a topic as heated and contentious as this, Wikipedia IS NOT a reliable source by any stretch of the imagination. All sides simply use it to promote their distorted view of whatever the contentious issue is. I would no more trust a pro Islamic commentary on Wikipedia than I would trust an anti Islamic commentary on that site. I do not even trust that site for basic science or history on non-controversial topics.

The only time I personally use Wikipedia is if I am desperate to find information on a topic and even then it is simply to find some links to more reliable sources. Even when Wikipedia supports a claim I want to promote, I do not and will not quote or reference Wikipedia. Any good researcher that is worth their salt understands that Wikipedia is an unreliable and unaccountable source that should never be used for serious research.

 

In most of my Classes at University, if you cited Wikipedia as a source it automatically lost you a grade on the paper.

 

So people want some references for the previous quotes. They are quoted all over the Internet, but I will provide some more reliable sources:
Quote #1) http://london.usembassy.gov/ukamb/tuttle033.html and http://www.uis.edu/journal/2k6mar8/opinion.html

Quote #2) http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/WhosCounting/story?id=1560771
I have found other sources also attributing the quote to Thomas Jefferson, but as was pointed out I also found a sightly different version of the quote attributed to Ben Franklin these include http://www.library.ucsb.edu/lauc/patriotact.html, http://www.gwu.edu/~ccps/ACOMMUNITARIANLETTER8.htm. The version attributed to Ben Franklin is:

“Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”​

Either way it is a relevant quote and it would have been totally in line with the other writings of either man. Exactly figuring out which man or if both made statements to this effect would require leaving the Internet and doing serious scholarly work from written documents once a list of written documents were complied. Based on Google searches I now tend to believe that it was probably Ben Franklin who really made this statement. The fact that it is so inline with what Thomas Jefferson wrote is probably the reason this quote frequently gets attributed to him.

Quote #3) http://etext.virginia.edu/jefferson/quotations/jeff1475.htm

 

That is what keeps the information at least someone accurate.. There are checks and balances...

The point is kinda moot now.

 

Wikipedia is basically a database of 'common knowledge' which can easily be wrong.

 

And frequently is wrong.

"Common wisdom" is neither common nor wise.

 

Anyone remember a few months back when wikipedia claimed it was no less accurate than the encyclopedias? I think it claimed an 85% accuracy rate and was pretty proud of that.

 

Wikipidia, like the Bible, is wrong when it doesn't agree with you.

Everyone knows that.

 

Nope. I'm pretty sure it has pages I haven't even considered visiting that have inacurate information.

Heck, I've seen links to specific moderated wiki's that I don't trust.

About the only wiki's I trust worth 2 shakes (of a lambs tail, for clarity) are the ones attached to open source projects, where the only ones that can contribute to the wiki are the ones that also work on the code, when I want to find out what the people producing the code are saying about the project.

And I protest your offhanded claim that I say I distrust wikipedia for the sole reason to discredit an argument on this forum, and your comparing it to the bible.

 

It was a general statement not directed at anyone.

 

It was a statement following posts saying that Wikipedia was unreliable, regarding 'when wikipedia is wrong', and thus i can be reasonably considered a response to those posts. I was one of those posters.

Unless you are contesting that your statement was a coincidence, and not in any way related to the posts about wikipedia that came before.

And I am still offended by your comparing Wikipedia and the Bible.

 

Actually it is. I've found it to usually be a great reference. Anything that could be changed can also be noted in a change log, so anyone with a little common sense could actually view such, to see if it was recently changed.

The rest stands as well. Wrong author (Jefferson), wrong quote, left out words. A bit embarrassing for someone who is abusing our founding fathers to assert they would approve of terrorists.

 

People treat both sources the same way. If they don't like something one of them says then they play the "questionable accuracy" card. Then, an otherwise intelligent debate gets sidetracked into an argument about the source as a whole rather than the small amount of information we care about.

You can't just write off 100% of a source because it's supposedly x% wrong. If nothing else you use it as a starting point for additional research.