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BQ – I’ve commented on this elsewhere: have you seen references of “Asian” for this report where the nationality of the other students is known. I don’t know for sure, but I’d also imagine the Beeb has to be careful of calling people “Pakistani” or any other nationality if the person has a British passport – it wouldn’t be factually correct.
I.e. ethnicity, and its bearing on the report does not equate to nationality.
Anon, what you fail to grasp is that there is no evidence to suggest that the “vast majority” of Muslims just want peace and harmony like anyone else. In fact, there is a great deal of evidence to the contrary. Read the results of polls of Muslim attitudes anywhere on the planet.
Did you know that two-thirds of Palestinians (granted that they are not all Muslims) approve of suicide bombing of Israeli civilians in the “territories”?
Here no doubt you would use the “justification” of the “occupation”. But what about Muslim attitudes in Europe – where they have been welcomed with open arms by the misguided host societies? What possible justification can they claim to plot and carry out murder and mayhem among their hosts’ civilians?
Show me the Muslim masses who are marching and demonstrating against the daily terror committed in their name. Show me the flood of letters to the papers unambiguously opposing terror. Show me a HYS forum on the BBC that has Muslims coming out against terror. Show me the Muslim organisations assisting victims of Islamic terror. Have you ever heard of a hat being passed around in a mosque for that purpose. The very idea is ridculous because it’s totally incongruent with the function of many of these mosques.
I think it was pointed out to you on this thread that you don’t think things through. Well, it’s never too late to start.
Oh, and Anon, if you are going to throw a big word like (sic) around (16.10.06 – 9:16 pm) at least try to figure out the correct way to use it.
Clue: You have it arse about face.
Anon –
You asked me how you should treat your islamic neighbour. You treat them as you’d treat anyone.
Now stop ducking my question. You cannot both demand tolerance for islam, yet support the rights of apostates from islam. One thing must simply give. I can hear the tick tocking going on in your head when you try to reconcile the simply reasonable (supporting apostates) with your empty liberal rhetoric (we must tolerate islam). As you now see, when hard decisions have to be made, empty liberal rhetoric doesn’t stand up to much scrutiny. Now stop ducking the issue and hiding behind the fact that murder has long been outlawed in our culture. Do you, when faced with an angry imam, tolerate his beliefs and tell him he may murder an apostate, or do you not tolerate his beliefs and tell him he is wrong?
If any of the group have English passports the term “Asian” should not be used either as it’s not factually correct!
It’s been widely reported that the language being spoken By the “Asian” students was Urdu thus indicating that they were likely to be Pakistani or of Pakistani heritage.
Rather than using the blanket term of “Asian” students I believe that naming them as Urdu speaking students would identify them more accurately and give immediate indication as to Codie Stott’s problem whilst still remaining Politically Correct.
Oh, come on, DifferentAnon,
What’s wrong with “Briton of Pakistani origin” or “Pakistani Briton” if the former is too long a description? The UK is drowning in political correctness and you want to drag it down further?
I agree Asian is a poor term. I’m guessing it is used as a rather vague term of ethnicity, not nationality. Either way, it tells us pretty little, but then given these are children, their exact origins may well not have been made public.
Urdu wouldn’t automatically denote the speaker as Pakistani – India has significant numbers of Urdu speakers, for example. As such, an indication wouldn’t be good enough to satisfy a reasonable criteria of the speaker being Pakistani.
“Briton of Pakistani origin” – a variant is already used where the ethnicity is known and relevant to the report, but it is pretty long-winded. E.g.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/5272316.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/5320708.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/5265182.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/4784215.stm
or “Pakistani Briton”
I don’t have a problem with that per se, but 2 points:
1) In this specific case, it’s not clear what the exact ethnicity was
2) Brits don’t tend to use terms like “Irish Briton” or “Pakistani Briton” in the same way Americans confidently talk about “Polish Americans”, for example.
“You cannot both demand tolerance for islam, yet support the rights of apostates from islam”
You could easily do that if you accepted that Islam wasn’t homegenous. It’s not difficult to write off nutbar Christian fundamentalists without tarring your parish vicar with the same brush.
without tarring your parish vicar with the same brush.
But Bush, & to a lesser extent Blair, seemingly get a little tar splattered.
I would venture George Bush gets a pretty easy ride compared to what the average man in the street thinks of him. Even as far back as 2001, he was not regarded well.
http://forum.cygnus-study.com/archive/index.php/t-897.html
In 2004, another survey found 2/3 Brits viewed him unfavorably.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/03/04/world/main604135.shtml
I would doubt a 2006 survey would show great improvement.
Bryan
What I disagree with is the treatement of muslims as a homogenous group defined by a single characteristic, i.e. their faith. That is what you will find most “liberals, leftie loons” etc object to as well.
Now, I don’t recall seeing throngs of Irish catholics parading the streets of dublin in outrage at IRA murder intended to create a catholic and united Ireland. Had I rounded upon every caltholic in the country and condemned them utterly for their “silence” because they weren’t marching in the streets (would that even appease you ?), had I ignored the fact that religious leaders were pretty much unanimous in ther condemnation, had i pointed to surveys conducted amongst Irish catholics who disagreed with the British partition of the north and screamed “look, they’re all the same, they support this murder”, then I would have been rightly accused of bigtory and simple narrow minded ‘one glove fits all’ mentality. Had I been a protestant my motives for doing so would have been questioned yet further.
Respecting that that groups of people are diverse is a fairly simple and widely accepted premise, but not it seems to you. To you it simply means spineless “leftism”, weakness and anti-US, anti-Israeli “self loathing”.
Your objection to muslims is because you are Jewish and even you cannot fail to spot the disproprtionate number of Jews who are very far to the right when it comes to Islam and Muslims. Face it, you’re the one who really is biased. Nothing is more obvious.
Finally, your imbecilc attempts to undermine anything I write by picking out errors is pathetic. So I happened to spell apostasy correctly by accident when of course I intended to spell it incorrectly as pete had spelled it apostacy(sic).
Your attempts to discredit me by picking on my use of language are ridculous(sic}.
Happy ?
Pete
In answer to your question :
“Now stop ducking my question. You cannot both demand tolerance for islam, yet support the rights of apostates from islam. One thing must simply give. I can hear the tick tocking going on in your head when you try to reconcile the simply reasonable (supporting apostates) with your empty liberal rhetoric (we must tolerate islam).”
I have already demonstrated that there are muslims who both demand tolerance for their faith and support the rights of apostates. How many christians actively campaign for the rights of the congregation to become atheists ? None I’ll bet, but they tolerate them. So your question was loaded.
The “tick tock” you refer to along with the idea that things must “give” suggests only one thing. Anyone who disagrees with the death penalty for apostates is not really a muslim. This is cleary not true. What is true is that they’re not the sort of muslim who fit your typical view of what a member of the “evil creed” should look like.
Now you haven’t addressed, nor attempted to address even, how if muslims can do both these things, I cannot ?
Now answer the f’ing question.
Are you a boxer, Anon? You’re ducking and diving, weaving and bobbing all to avoid answering the simple question. I’ll leave it there then. It’s noted though, that your liberal exhortation to ‘tolerate’ islam crumbles to dust when subjected to the mildest scrutiny. The koranic command to kill apostates is well known, and the central tenet of islam, that the koran is the literal word of allah, likewise well known. That you cannot bring yourself to say that you would have no tolerance for this one koranic command speaks volumes.
Now I don’t particularly care is some muslims don’t go along with this command? What would you like me to do, give them a medal for not cutting off the head of someone who rejects islam? How enlightened of them. In any case, who they are, how many is there number is utterly beside the point. The point being, you come in here and fling your liberalness around like confetti, telling me to tolerate islam, yet you have little to sustain it.
When I ask you if the sentence of death for apostates is to be tolerated or not, you duck behind the law. Murder is not wrong because English Law says so, it is objectively wrong and English Law reflects this piece of Judeo-Christian morality. When I ask you again if the sentence of death is to be tolerated, you hide behind the statement that some muslims don’t agree with it.
If your liberalness was robust in any sense you would be able to tell me why I must tolerate islam, death sentences for apostates and all.
Then again, you could just admit that this exhortation to tolerate islam was just empty, unthinking, liberal rhetoric, drummed into you by a decadent culture from a young age, wherein it has lain unexamined, to be brought up and flung at any conservative in the form of cheap insults whenever they disagree with you.
So I happened to spell apostasy correctly by accident when of course I intended to spell it incorrectly as pete had spelled it apostacy(sic).
Yes, yes, of course. I suppose that’s why you spelt it correctly twice followed by (sic).
By the way, If you Google “apostacy” you’ll see that over 300 000 entries have it with the same spelling as Pete London’s, though “apostasy” is correct.
I’m not trying to discredit you. You do that successfully all on your own. I’m indicating that you are not the great thinker you seem to think you are. Comments like the following prove it: Respecting that that groups of people are diverse is a fairly simple and widely accepted premise, but not it seems to you. I never said they are not diverse. At least a third of Palestinians apparently don’t think that blowing up Jewish women and children is a good thing. You have a real comprehension problem.
Your objection to muslims is because you are Jewish… Right Anon, trust your judgement as to who or what people object to and why I wont.
I met a Filipino lady who is convinced that Muslims want to impose their will on her country – as they intend to impose it on every country within their rather long reach.
And no, I don’t think she’s Jewish.
“The koranic command to kill apostates is well known”
Come off it. You could trawl the bible for commands that would jar significantly with modern morals and laws. Indeed, significant enough numbers of Christians do read the bible literally.
DifferentAnon
Are you really that stupid?
Indeed, significant enough numbers of Christians do read the bible literally.
So only a ‘very small minority’ of muslims (copyright – liberals) support terrorists and terrorism, but significant enough numbers of Christians do read the bible literally.
You really don’t have a clue what you’re on about. And do please stop cluttering the place up. I’m waiting for Anon to tell me whether it is better to tolerate murder for ex-islamic apostates or or be accused of intolerance for islam.
“So only a ‘very small minority’ of muslims (copyright – liberals) support terrorists and terrorism, but significant enough numbers of Christians do read the bible literally.”
What, I’m supposed to defend comments you want to me to have said now?
Your point was that the Koran commands death of apostates. My point was that other scriptures have notably barking commands. The Torah has a passage advocating death for apostasy, for example. Your response is to ignore this and instead make up a quote you want me to have said. Which apparently then means I don’t have a clue.
Are you always such an informed debating legend?
DifferentAnon
Here’s a clue: When I put a phrase in quotes, followed by ‘copyright – Liberals’ I was implying that it’s a liberal line, not yours personally. You can tell, because I’d have quoted you if I were quoting you, and not put ‘copyright – Liberals’.
By the way, you seem to think I’m up for a discussion on penalties for apostacy under the various religions. Dunno what gave you that idea.
If you see Anon do let him know I’m still wondering how he can square his supposed intoleration of murder for apostacy in islam with his advice to me to tolerate islam.
Pete
What the f*** is this ?
“Now I don’t particularly care is some muslims don’t go along with this command? What would you like me to do, give them a medal for not cutting off the head of someone who rejects islam? How enlightened of them.”
“If your liberalness was robust in any sense you would be able to tell me why I must tolerate islam, death sentences for apostates and all.
Once again. No one should tolerate the death penalty for apostasy. But not all muslims do. You may “not care” about that, but that’s strange since the central premise of your argument is that Islam is evil because of things like punishment by death for apostasy. I disagree with your failure to distinguish Muslims who happen to support murder and those who do not, this is however totally inkeeping with your inabilty to treat muslims as a diverse group. Is that clear enough for you ?
Now once again I ask you are people who call themselves “muslims” who reject the death penalty of apostasy to be regarded the same way as those who do ? Are they muslims or not ?
No one should tolerate the death penalty for apostasy.
Well thank you, Anon. You can’t bring yourself to use the first person singular but that’ll have to do.
I’ll now take your advise to tolerate islam and chuck it in the bin. In fact, I’ll take it out of the bin and chuck it straight back in again. Just to be clear then: when a liberal tells you to be tolerant of something, that may very well be empty liberal crap, and we have established that it’s ok to be intolerant of certain aspects of islam.
Tolerance breeds respect ….
“If you see Anon do let him know I’m still wondering how he can square his supposed intoleration of murder for apostacy in islam with his advice to me to tolerate islam.”
Why the binary choice?
Would you expect intolerance of gay-bashing christian hardliners to mean that you had to be intolerant of christianity?
Your view of the binary choice presupposes that all muslims are hardliners that support the death sentence.
Pete
“and we have established that it’s ok to be intolerant of certain aspects of islam.”
I’ll ask you another time : Are people who call themselves “muslims” who reject the death penalty of apostasy to be regarded the same way as those who do ? Are they muslims or not ?
It’s a simple question, but I can see why you’re frightened to answer it.
and what on earth does
“Just to be clear then: when a liberal tells you to be tolerant of something, that may very well be empty liberal crap, and we have established that it’s ok to be intolerant of certain aspects of islam.”
mean ? Treat all muslims the same regardless of what they think ? Have the guts to say it.
Anon
The topic under discussion was how you square telling others to tolerate islam whilst not tolerating at least one aspect of it yourself. I have to admit, I did find some enjoyment in seeing how long it would take to get you to admit that intolerance of at least one part of islam is just dandy.
As for muslims who don’t believe in it, I don’t give a damn. I know you don’t give a damn. It wasn’t pertinent to the subject and I know that DifferentAnon doesn’t give a damn either. The pair of you tried your best to take the discussion off into other areas, but you failed.
I think I’ll be off now, there are too many intolerant bigots for my liking round here 😉
There was me thinking the topic under discussion was why it is wrong to emphasise that some fanatics and terrorists conduct murder in the name of their Islamic faith, as a means to discriminate against every muslim. You are very inconsistent, failing to call all christians homophobes because some of them are. The fact you can’t or wont see this is absolutely pathetic.
“I think I’ll be off now, there are too many intolerant bigots for my liking round here”
You just noticed?
Anon wrote: “Moderate muslims are suprisnigly easy to find -”
But keep awfully quiet when they’re ‘extremist’ fellow religious have their burnoses in an uproar. When was the last time you saw a Moslem *counter* demonstration to the usual ‘outrage’?
“but the sad fact is that they face an impossible task in sorting out their house as you put it, because we have people on forums like this who wont allow them to.”
I don’t see how this follows. How on earth does hostility towards the extremists they themselves are supposed to despise keep ‘moderate’ Moslems from putting the former in their place? Assuming of course that they want to – or even exist.
“They know that Islam is evil and therefore whatver anyone else says about it can’t be right. This is your problem, not muslims,”
Let me put it this way; it would sure help if Moslems demonstrated they were indeed a ‘religion of peace’. They talk it but they don’t *do* it if you follow me.
Oddly enough it is perfectly legitimate for Moslems to riot and murder over cartoons or a 14th century quote but let a European Christian express a less than enchanted view of Islam and he’s a racist.
Anon wrote: “Your objection to muslims is because you are Jewish and even you cannot fail to spot the disproprtionate number of Jews who are very far to the right when it comes to Islam and Muslims. Face it, you’re the one who really is biased. Nothing is more obvious.”
Gotcha. Anti-Islam = bad. Anti-semitism = good.
No wonder you won’t get a name.
anon -> “even you cannot fail to spot the disproprtionate number of Jews who are very far to the right when it comes to Islam”
very far to the “right”? huh?
forgotten about the Soviet war in Afghanistan already?
Or Stalin’s Mosque deconstruction campaigns?
Roxana
I don’t recall seeing throngs of Irish catholics parading the streets of dublin in outrage at IRA murder intended to create a catholic and united Ireland. Had I rounded upon every caltholic in the country and condemned them utterly for their “silence” because they weren’t marching in the streets (would that even appease you ?), had I ignored the fact that religious leaders were pretty much unanimous in ther condemnation, had i pointed to surveys conducted amongst Irish catholics who disagreed with the British partition of the north and screamed “look, they’re all the same, they support this murder”, then I would have been rightly accused of bigtory and simple narrow minded ‘one glove fits all’ mentality. Had I been a protestant my motives for doing so would have been questioned yet further.
Your arguments are that because moderate muslims are not out in the streets taking part in organised protests against extremists, they should all be treated the same. It’s pathetic.
How suggesting someones bias against muslims is because they are Jewish makes me an “anti-semite” is beyond me.
You people are shameless, milking the Holocaust victims and those who were bereaved again and again and again in order to paint yourselves as lifes perennial victims, and to discredit any arguments against you. You all do it and it’s all so predictable.
Anon writes
“How suggesting someones bias against muslims is because they are Jewish makes me an “anti-semite” is beyond me.”
And then writes
“You people are shameless, milking the Holocaust victims and those who were bereaved again and again and again in order to paint yourselves as lifes perennial victims, and to discredit any arguments against you. You all do it and it’s all so predictable.”
Hoist by one’s own petard springs to mind.
Speaking as a non-Jewish, secular, agnostic C of E, I don’t like nasty little Nazis, so why don’t you just piss off anon and contribute to blogs like Lenin’s Tomb, I’m sure you’ll be more at home there.
Anon, I was going to reply to your obsessive repetition of your “argument” comparing the IRA to Islamic terrorists until I got to your last paragraph. Roxana has read you correctly and confirmed what I’ve long suspected – that you are a thinly-veiled anti-Semite. Well, you’ve truly removed your veil now.
There are plenty of neo-Nazi, left-wing fascist and Islamic terrorist sites. Why don’t you pop in there and chat about “milking the Holocaust.” I’m sure you’ll feel right at home.
I wont be wasting any more time on you.
TPO,
Well said.
Anon.
What on earth makes you think you can compare the struggles in Northern Ireland with the current Muslim issue.
Please explain, although I should take a ladder along, if I were you, so that you can climb out of the hole at the end.
Bryan
Reciprocated.
We should like to apologize for all the rubbish we have written.
Anon: “How suggesting someones bias against muslims is because they are Jewish makes me an “anti-semite” is beyond me.”
Are you perhaps familiar with the concept of ‘stereotyping’? Normally it is considered prejudical. Thus your assumption that anybody who expressed concern about Muslim violence must be a Jew. BTW you *are* familiar with the characterizations of Jews common on Arab media.
Here we go again! Newsnight’s lead feature? A pre-fabricated story about nucelar weapons research dished-out by their favourite source: Greenpeace.
3,000 “journalists” and the corporation still takes its ideas from a bunch of watermelons.
“We should like to apologize for all the rubbish we have written.”
Hey, sock puppets can be fun too, kids.
Has the BBC reported on this?
Market Participant
Yes. In fact, she’s was interviewed on BBC TV and, amazingly, given a really hard time by the BBC guy. He tripped her up with a question about whether she had worn the veil in front of a male member of the school staff at her interview for the job. Sje wouldn’t answer the question but he eventually made her admit that she hadn’t worn it, exposing her as a politically-motivated hypocrite. Great stuff.
Here’s my take on the veil story from another thread:
I heard the veiled “teacher” on the World Service yesterday:
I just would like people to understand that the veil does not cause a barrier…
Hell, not even between the wearer’s face and the spectator’s eyes?
She had more to say. I couldn’t decipher it all:
I think people sh… open up t… th… perception that even with the veil on I can teach and I do teach perfectly well.
It hardly seems necessary to point out that there’s a powerful incongruity in her talking about “perception” and insisting that people “open up” from behind a veil.
Sorry, wrong thread.
I always enjoy Pete_London’s comments, and GCooper’s comments, but why waste your time composing answers to anonymouses? Normal readers don’t know which post to refer back to. So it is pointless.
No normal reader is going to scroll back through all the ‘anonymous’ comments to find a reference that fits. So your own, identified post, won’t be properly followed.
Let the anonymouses shrivel on the vine. No one credits their dull-witted, ill-conceived “thoughts” about anything anyway.
How dull-witted do you have be not to be able to think up a handle? Du-uh.
Verity,
Yes but if it’s really necessary to respond, one can just include the date and time of the comment so we know which “annoying mouse” made it.