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Showing content with the highest reputation on 09/13/2011 in Posts
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Oh please Asys... intelligent, thoughtful consideration of consequences? This is US health care we are talking about. Wade into this mind field through all the special interests and we really do live in Bizzaroworld, where good things occur only as unintended and unforeseen by-products.1 point
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Since I was the one to first mention the pope, I'll play along. Pope Benedict XVI. I'll admit that off the top of my head I don't recall his real first name but his last name is Ratzinger. I didn't cite his name because it was irrelevant. Do you ever call Barak Obama, "the president" or do you always call him President Obama? How is this relevant to anything? As usual, I have to agree with Dwayne. Sept 11th allowed us to show both sides of America. We saw how awesome we could be but it also showed our dark side and our ignorance. We had ignorant (mostly white) Americans going after people who weren't even Muslim. They were going after Sikhs and Hindus.1 point
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First off, good on you girl for being brave enough to have a contrary opinion. I'm going to disagree with you, and likely in my straight forward way, but I didn't want to take a chance that you would construe that as an attack. I'm truly interested in your opinion. Can you name one for me, without using Google? The doc referenced the Pope, and I'm guessing that we all can agree that he speaks for Catholics. Who speaks for Muslims? Who specifically would you point to for those comments? As the Doc mentioned, I too seem to remember many local Muslim leaders risking their lives to come forward to speak out against the terrorist acts. Risked their lives not by identifying themselves as rebel Muslims and in doing so be targeted by terrorists, but by showing their faces in their local communities as Muslim and exposing themselves and their families to attacks from their neighbors. That truly makes my heart hurt. I think that would apply to all religions as well, not just the Muslims. Again, who are "they"? I could agree here if we're talking about Pakistan. But Afghanistan? No...More Taliban are killed and captured due to the efforts of the village Afghanis than any other way. You're trying to make this a simple, straight forward issue in that country. You seem to believe that you're either Taliban, or not. And that's simply not the case. The Taliban are well armed, with American weapons, (Those given to them to help chase the Russians out of their country) and soulless, in my opinion. When they choose you to fight for them you either fight, or show your hatred of Allah and the Koran, which then gives them the right to rain down any kind of pain, and humiliation, up to and very often including death, upon your family. For people like me, that leaves no real decision to be made. Unless of course you'd allow your family to be molested and killed to stand upon your ideals instead of fight? And I'm curious, though of course it's none of my business, as to your religious affiliations, if any? What do you make of the comments, some from well respected members on the site, that Christians and Muslims are operating from the same playbook? That the Christian Bible and Koran are the same document, yet Christians have used it to cause much more pain and death than the Taliban have even considered possible? How do you respond to those comments? And how then do you not despise Christians even more so than Muslims? For me, I'll simply restate what I've stated before. I will continue to refuse to live my life based on generalizations and stereotypes. I will continue to believe that the world is full of amazing, kind, generous people peppered with assholes. I will continue to choose the unpopular opinion when I believe it to be right. And I will continue to defend my family, my friends, and my neighbors to the best of my ability to do so whether they be white, black, gay, straight, Catholic, Muslim, or Atheist. I will also attack any of those people with a vengeance as soon as I see any sign that they are a threat to my family, community or country. Muslims are believed by many to be evil, violent, sneaky beasts set on world domination. Yet my experience, having spoken and put my hands on literally thousands of Afg Muslims shows little sign of that. Atheists are believed by many to be soulless, amoral, self centered automatons, yet my families future, and my life in particular has been changed forever because of my friendship with akflightmedic. Christians are 'supposed' to be kind, loving, unselfish pillars of the community, yet I've watched them blow up buildings, hang blacks, shoot abortion doctors, all in the name of their God. Micro stereotypes may sometimes hold true, or so it's appeared to me from an anecdotal point of view, but I've never seen the case where they've held up on a macro scale. Chbare could probably give us some quantum string theory explanation for that. But me? Yeah, I have no concrete idea why that might be, though some weak theories do play in my head... We celebrate that evil didn't win on Sept 11, 10 years past. But I disagree. The terrorist showed the world our shallow thinking, and willingness to hate and attack, without serious thought or debate, the first shadow that shows in our window. I believe that that is forgivable in the moment, as we're still just human children evolutionarily speaking, but 10 years later? It shows the world our Achilles heal...and that's a terrible and dangerous thing I believe. Dwayne1 point
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Since I took the weekend off from the world and unplugged I missed this thread earlier. I glanced through most of the thread to get the jist of where it was heading so I think I can post and be part of the thread. 10 years ago on a bright sunny 68 degree Tuesday I watched my world fall apart before my eyes. I watched as 3000 people laost their lives and many many more were effected because of it. I watched as everyone turned grey, no creed, no color, no nationality, GREY. It was BEAUTIFUL!!! I watched as human beings became one. I worked 72 hours on a pile of steaming debris with my fellow humans. We as humans cried together, worked together, prayed together, felt pain together. I was on a bucket brigade and some folks on the same were Muslim. They cried the same tears as I did. Felt the same pain as I did. Had the same anger at 11 men that I did. I still talk to them today and they still feel what I feel today. 10 years later they hate the same 11 men that caused this atrocity. This wasn't a country that attacked us, this wasn't a religon that attacked us. This was 11 men that attacked us. I don't think 11 men represent an entire religon, country or community. Just as Oklahoma doesn't represent all Americans 9/11 doesn't represent all Muslims. It is the short sighted, fear mongering, nieve people that belive they do. I have never been to the Middle East or Indonesea but I would like tothink that if and when I do I would be looked at and treated as a fellow human being. I know I may be looking for rainbows but hopefully not. Hopefully this makes sense....1 point
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However, I've yet to see major Christian leaders come out and say, "hey about the whole dark ages thing, the Inquisition and the crusades, our bad, sorry about that." I think we can all agree that there exist factions of radical Islam; however, I am not about to label entire nations of people based on this fact. Also, Pakistan and Afghanistan are in states of near chaos with drug trades, massive corruption and unstable governments running amuck. I am not sure they are the best examples of countries that have the capability to stop radical Muslim terrorism. While I agree that more can and should be done and perhaps Muslim leaders should take the lead, but the situation is far more complicated than many could imagine. Finally, both countries are not primarily the same religion in the sense that many factions of Islam exist and this causes significant tension among Muslims. The struggle between Shiite and Sunni Muslims among other groups is well known to illustrate one example.1 point
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Probably the best thing you've ever posted. There have been plenty of Muslims who have spoken out against the Sept 11th attacks. The difference between the Muslims and the Catholic church is that the Catholic church has a central institution that carries the power and acts as the voice of the entire church. The Muslims do not have this central pulpit so when some small mosque speaks out, no one listens. When the pope speaks, he has a huge audience. There are extremists from all religions. How much coverage they get depends on the size of their targets. The bombing of an abortion clinic that kills 2 people will not get as much play as 2 planes that bring down the towers and kill almost 3000.1 point
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Hm, I can be sympathetic towards muslims today, just as much as I can be sympathetic towards christians/christianity on the 27th of November when Pope Urban II. screamed "Deus Io vult" to start more than a hundred years slaughtering of muslims. That`s simply due to the fact, that a religious background/orientation isn`t synomymous to a religious related terrorist act, just because it`s the same religion.1 point