vimothy
yurp
He famously met dictator Saddam in 1994 and told him: “Sir, allow me to salute your courage, power and indefatigability.”
The Scourge of Imperialism meets the Sword of Arabism!
Bluueeeggh
Islamophobia
- Thread starter zhao
- Start date
He famously met dictator Saddam in 1994 and told him: “Sir, allow me to salute your courage, power and indefatigability.”
The Scourge of Imperialism meets the Sword of Arabism!
Bluueeeggh
crackerjack
Well-known member
Yeah, I know, but the Uday pic came up first on google...
He also famously described the fall of the USSR as "the worst day of my life".
http://www.socialistunitynetwork.co.uk/counter/bigb04.htm
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
Hey, c'mon: that cat impression was pretty good. And I had to go and have a lie down after seeing him in that leotard...
vimothy
yurp
From Sky News:
It gets better, though (after the slightly unpleasant bio of His Excellency):
In the video, Mr Galloway is seen to greet Uday, shaking his hand twice and calling him "Excellency".
He jokes about losing weight, going bald and failing to give up smoking cigars.
Mr Galloway also orders watching journalists not to publish parts of their conversation.
Finally, according to the paper, he taunts the United States and vows to stick with Uday "until the end".
He jokes about losing weight, going bald and failing to give up smoking cigars.
Mr Galloway also orders watching journalists not to publish parts of their conversation.
Finally, according to the paper, he taunts the United States and vows to stick with Uday "until the end".
It gets better, though (after the slightly unpleasant bio of His Excellency):
The video was shot for an Iraqi TV station and was smuggled out of Iraq before the regime fell.
Uday beat and stabbed to death his father's personal valet and food taster, Kemal Hana Gegeo, and was briefly imprisoned by Saddam.
He also raped numerous women, and his victims are believed to have included a visiting Russian ballerina.
And as head of the Iraqi Olympic Committee, he oversaw the imprisonment and torture of Iraqi athletes who were deemed not to have performed to expectations.
Uday was shot dead by US soldiers in 2003. He was 39.
Mr Galloway is the favourite to be voted out of the Celebrity Big Brother house this evening.
Uday beat and stabbed to death his father's personal valet and food taster, Kemal Hana Gegeo, and was briefly imprisoned by Saddam.
He also raped numerous women, and his victims are believed to have included a visiting Russian ballerina.
And as head of the Iraqi Olympic Committee, he oversaw the imprisonment and torture of Iraqi athletes who were deemed not to have performed to expectations.
Uday was shot dead by US soldiers in 2003. He was 39.
Mr Galloway is the favourite to be voted out of the Celebrity Big Brother house this evening.
D
droid
Guest
Sorry to interject - But I haven't been around here for a while. Would this a fair (but simplified) summary of how you view recent events in Iraq?
- The US and UK invade to bring democracy to Iraq and save Iraqis from Saddam's evil tyranny.
- The occupying powers attempt to set up a fair and democratic government in order to give Iraqis genuine self-determination.
- Homogeneous 'Sunni Saddamite insurgents' try to frustrate these attempts through the exclusive use of terrorism in an attempt to regain power.
- Acts of brutality perpetrated by the occupiers are either individual exceptions, 'mistakes', or are justified in light of their noble motives and the awesome evil of their enemies.
Just curious. Sorry if Im making unfair assumptions.
vimothy
yurp
Not necessarily -- I was trying to talk more about Iraq and the Iraqi experience rather than the US and the UK. How do you view "recent events in Iraq" relative to Iraqi history post 1958 (or even more generally, post the rise of Nasser et al)? How do you view "recent events in Iraq" relative to Middle Eastern history post 1950s?
That's an ultra-simplification, isn't it? Some certainly supported the war for humanitarian reasons, some for strategic reasons, some for misguided wishes for revenge for 9/11, etc... What do I know of the motivations of Blair and Bush? What matters (though not to us, I admit) is that they did bring democracy and end Saddam's open tyranny (though not the resistance).
This they also did, to the extent that it was possible, regardless of true or deep motivation, and regardless of my views about recent events.
Another massive over-simplification. The "insurgency" is a mish-mash of groups gathered together to oppose the occupation and Shia rule. They are made up of Baathists, fedayeen, former-Republican Guard, Sunni supremacists, poor Iraqis paid for terror and foreign jihadists looking for martyrdom and mayhem. There are lots of good documents from military journals and others on the different resistance groups, which I can probably find, if you are interested.
EDIT: Not sure what you mean by "exclusive use of terrorism" either.
And if I answer "no", then what? Are "acts of brutality perpetrated by the occupiers" structurally intended, the true purpose of the invasion, revealing of American nature?
Is there a difference between American power and Baathi power?
Fire away, by all means.
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vimothy
yurp
I disagree. I will try to bring in some citations from the Bible tomorrow.
The problem (such as it is) isn't Islam, it's what Muslims choose to do, and why they do it.
But that isn't because Islam is inherently violent, but because people come from cultures where these things are unfamiliar. Go back fifty or even twenty years and most native Europeans or Americans were as reactionary.
crackerjack
Well-known member
This seems sweeping, to say the least. Can I ask where you live?
I'm in Bethnal Green: none of my friends have been called prostitutes. No doubt gay people cop shit off Muslim bigots, but "live in fear"? Walking arm in arm up Whitechapel Rd at 2.00am is a weird way to go about cowering.
What's your evidence for saying "They terrorize the elderly" more than any other groups of lads in rough areas?
vimothy
yurp
@polz:
What do you mean by "Muslim"? In God's Continent Jenkins produces figures to the effect that only 20% of Muslims polled in one area actually practice regularly. Many are as secular as "Christians" (i.e. European natives), but "Muslim" is applied as an ethnic category, meaning anyone originating in a majority Muslim country.
From the GNXP review:
What do you mean by "Muslim"? In God's Continent Jenkins produces figures to the effect that only 20% of Muslims polled in one area actually practice regularly. Many are as secular as "Christians" (i.e. European natives), but "Muslim" is applied as an ethnic category, meaning anyone originating in a majority Muslim country.
From the GNXP review:
Scholars tend to count one as "Muslim" on the slightest pretext, because Islamic identity is viewed as a catchall. In contrast, Christian affiliation is associated more closely with a pro-active identification. This results in the exaggeration of the number of religious Muslims and an underestimate of Europeans with sentiment or sympathy toward Christianity. In other words, while secular individuals from a Muslim background can be assumed to have some relationship with the Islamic cultural complex, the same certainly applies to secular individuals from a Christian background! Jenkins himself regularly repeats the claim that "8-10% of French are Muslims or of Muslim origin." The latter is key, it is well known that French "Muslims" are nearly as secular in their habits as French "Catholics," and a recent survey found that 4% of respondents identified as Muslim. This implies that a non-trivial number (assuming that around 1 out of 10 French citizens is of ethnic identity which is conventionally Muslim) of French Muslims have even disavowed a nominal association with the religion, which is parallel with a concurrent decline of Catholic identification in the mainstream French population since the 1960s.
vimothy
yurp
But the point is that many things can be interpreted in different ways. Why, if the New Testament redeems the Bible, do Jews not act as violently under the injunction of the scriptures as Muslims do?
Ok -- does Islam also inspire acts of kindness, or is it only violence?
And neither did Islam. Muslims have done these things, it is true, and I do not deny it. But trying to find the reason in the Koran is a category error. Christians also did terrible things in the past. Why is that?
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
What you mean is, Christians aren't generally doing those things NOW...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witch_hunts
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirty_Years'_War
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_inquisition
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alhambra_decree
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conquistadores
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_colonization_of_the_Americas
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonialism
vimothy
yurp
I doubt it because you also said,
You are talking about ethnic minority teenagers acting like native British teenagers (albeit with slightly different content). Why are there Muslims who don't do these things?
vimothy
yurp
I'm not going to get into an argument about the history of Islamic civilisation or Islamic jurisprudence. You are talking about modern fundamentalist revisions of Islam.
I'm not sure what you mean. My point is that saying Islam inspires violence is meaningless. It might inspire many things in the mind of the believer. Islam inspires kindness. Islam inspires violence. Both equally profound. Both equally mundane. Both equally vague.
That's great. In case you haven't noticed, I'm also a "racist Islamophobe", according to some on this board. However, the fact that Christians did these things in the past invalidates your point. Violence is not exclusive to Islam.
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
But you said "Christian's didn't fly planes into buildings...." - OK, so planes didn't exist hundreds of years ago, but Christianity has a pretty fucking violent history, does it not? The fact that many regions of the world where terrible violence and oppression used to be carried out in the name of that faith, whether on other Christians, 'heretics' or 'heathens', have since evolved towards a liberal secularism surely shows how religions (as they are practised by the people that follow them, I mean, not in the theoretical-theological sense) *are* able to change over time, depending of course on various social conditions.
vimothy
yurp
I.e. your assertion that Islam is uniquely violent is wrong.
A different conversation, but one worth having.
There are some sects within Islam (Salafi, Deobandi, Wahhabi, etc) that are deeply reactionary and frequently violent. There were people in the past in the Arab Middle East who were no less violent and reactionary, before the rise of Radical Islam. Then they murdered for fascist derived ideologies like Pan Arabism and Arab nationalism. Why is this then specifically an Islamic problem?
D
droid
Guest
For the love of god (or Allah) man! What planet are you living on? If you're looking at things that way, then Christians still do horrible things! They bomb the fuck out of civilians in other countries, they torture innocents (sometimes to death), they beat rape and kill gays, women and people of other races in some of the most brutal ways possible. They use chemical and nuclear weapons. They molest children. They sell arms and torture equipment to dictators... I could go on forever...
Some of the worst atrocities in the history of mankind (and the 20th century) were committed by 'Christians', or people who came from a Christian culture.
Were you born in the garden of Eden by any chance?
Pure fantasy. This is all textbook bigotry. Slandering an entire religion and culture based purely on your perceptions of the acts of a tiny minority.
D
droid
Guest
Aha i see - they dont SAY they do it....
And what difference does that make anyway?
Christians: Their states commit massive acts of violence that aren't directly inspired by their religion.
Muslims: A tiny minority commit minor (in a global scale) acts of violence (arguably) based on a radical interpretation of their religion.
QED - The Muslims are to blame for all the hate and violence in the world.
vimothy
yurp
You said,
i DO think the Islam faith itself is fundamentally very different from other spiritual traditions in its advocacy of violence or imperialism
And yet the Old Testament advocates plenty of violence, and Christian history is filled with plenty of imperialism. So either the sine qua non or essence of a faith as you perceive it is not the guiding hand behind the actions of nominal believers, or Islam is not a religion that "fundamentally incites violence". Try this thought experiement:
If Islam does fundamentally advocate violence, and the essence of religion (as you describe it) is the guiding hand behind the actions of its believers, why are there non-violent Muslims?
In addition, you are quite wrong that Judaism has the law and Islam only has violence. Islam has centruries of jurisprudence and commentary, all trampled on and discarded by modern, globalised, ultra violent morons like the Wahhabi and Salafi fascists who actually are violent and who did fly the planes on 9/11.
vimothy
yurp
By which you mean the invasion of Iraq. This is also total bullshit.
Muslims: many, like Christians, live in states where the state itself commits massive acts of violence against the people, and where it suppresses the free expression of religion.