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I am filled with rage



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sequoia




 
 
    
 

Post Tue, Aug 10 2010, 1:46 am
Why does the world ignore the human rights abuses in Muslim countries? WHY?

The Archbishop of Canterbury heaped opprobrium on America, but about Muslim countries only said that "the political solutions [!!!] have been less than impressive."

Political solutions! These are real, live women being stoned, burned, hanged, and buried alive! The Muslim world oppresses and tortures women, and everyone who claims to care about women's rights is silent!

Gay people! Same!

Jews! Okay, no surprise there, who cares about Jews.

Christians! Christians flee any place that gets a Muslim majority. Muslims don't just torture their own vulnerable people. They don't just murder Jews. They also persecute Christians, and the nominally Christian Western world in the face of people like the Archbishop ignores it and cares nothing for their own brethren.

Every value that liberal society espouses, every priority of human rights and dignity, is ignored, stamped on, and nonexistent in Arab Muslim societies (I realize the situation is different in places like Malaysia although it too is being radicalized).

So why does no one care? Why is it okay to hang gay people, stone women, murder Jews, destroy and ransack churches, execute without trials, throw acid on girls' faces, torture and kill -- as long as Arab Muslims are doing it?

Why does the Western world turn away from the suffering people in these societies? Why don't we support their dissident movements, speak out against their oppression of their own people, refuse to do business with them? Or at least acknowledge the situation?!
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life'sgreat




 
 
    
 

Post Tue, Aug 10 2010, 2:02 am
Yeah. And while that is going on, they're busy focusing on sending 'much needed aid' to those worse off than them in Gaza.
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lost




 
 
    
 

Post Tue, Aug 10 2010, 2:06 am
! Thumbs Up Salut Cheers

Last edited by lost on Tue, Aug 10 2010, 9:45 am; edited 1 time in total
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JRKmommy




 
 
    
 

Post Tue, Aug 10 2010, 3:09 am
Out of a very misplaced sense of "the enemy of my enemy is my ally".

It goes something like this:

Those who have grown up in freedom get to criticize the West, esp. the United States and Israel.

Therefore, if someone declares war on the US, they can't be all bad. According to this logic, if the explanation given for anti-American/anti-Israel actions doesn't make sense...you just substitute your own. For example, there's no need to have an actual Palestinian on NPR discuss why the Palestinian negotiation team rejected the offer made during the Oslo Accords, when they can just have Norman Finklestein share his thoughts instead.

On the other hand, if someone from a Muslim background gets so inspired by the West that they embrace the idea of freedom and feminism, and happen to point out problems in their own society and areas where the West really does offer more freedom - they can expect to be shunned in the progressive world.

Have you read "Infidel" by Ayaan Hirsi Ali, or "The Trouble With Islam Today" by Irshad Manji?

Surreal video exchange between Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Avi Lewis:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08EYqwyns-k
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chanchy123




 
 
    
 

Post Tue, Aug 10 2010, 3:50 am
Pick your answer: Racism, greed, anti-semitism

Racism - the Arabs/Irnians/whatever cannot be expected to behave like normal human beings and respect human rights. We should not hold them to the same standard as we hold the white person.

Greed - their human rights violations are ignored because trade (especially natural resources such as petroleum) can blind any liberal.

Anti-Semitism - self explanatory.

I'd say it's usually a mix of all three reasons.
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DrMom




 
 
    
 

Post Tue, Aug 10 2010, 6:13 am
This is because so many of the Western liberals who demonize Israel for her treatment of Palestinians actually do not care about Palestinians or human rights. They are simply trying to assuage their own historic guilt for the Holocaust, or for other past atrocities against Jews. By pointing a finger and screeching, "Aha! You're just as bad as we were ... er, um, I mean, as those bad Nazis were" they can deflect attention from and delay acknowledging their own shameful behavior.

Their concerns are not "human rights"; their concerns are covering up their own collective guilt and their refusal to acknowledge this guilt and do proper tshuva.
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mimivan




 
 
    
 

Post Tue, Aug 10 2010, 6:35 am
Yes, I'm so sick of it..
how can someone who advocates rights for homosoxuals
at the same time tell us to turn a blind eye at the oppression of women in Islam.

What happened to "it's okay if you don't hurt anyone else.." Well this IS hurting someone else.
Our new Jewish Justice of the Supreme court espouses a similarly illogical policy..tolerance for gays, tolerance for those who torture and kill gays l'havdil, women, Jews etc..

I'm not pro gay by any stretch, but I'm putting on my left wing cap and trying to figure out how it is even logical..

They torture women because they are being oppressed by Jews? They burn women and Xtians because the Israel makes them do it? Or its the fault of the entire Western World! Okay, that's a very demeaning and patronizing way of looking at other cultures, isn't it. They can't think for themselves. They can't be civilized unless we are doing what we should..hmm..sounds more like the concept of White Man's Burden and Colonialism than any "open and tolerant" liberal multiculturalism.


I don't get it.
This is typical of Moshiach times. Nothing makes sense but crying out for the GEulah!

p.s and I used to think leftwingers were so intellectual. This doesn't fit with any kind of basic Logic!
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PinkFridge




 
 
    
 

Post Tue, Aug 10 2010, 8:27 am
It is a very strange world. Governor Patterson is wearing a red thread because, why not. We're going back to the days of the Greeks where all idols are ok, as long as you don't say that only mine is. So you would think that radical Islam would be a complete no no to the left.
BUT the western world has a hard time imagining that there's absolute evil in the world. So they deny that there is any institutionalized absolute evil in the Moslem world which allows them to dabble in this idolatry and pick and choose the exotic features that enchant them.

I don't know if I'm at all being clear. I've thought about this and simply can't figure out another way to explain why liberal women - speakers of the house, first ladies down - aren't leading the way.
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bluebird




 
 
    
 

Post Tue, Aug 10 2010, 8:29 am
Because it's not their community, not their culture, not their problem. Or a misplaced sense of appreciating cultural differences. Or thinking that it's hopeless and you can't change "those people" and they bring it on themselves. People are inherently selfish. Sad
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mimivan




 
 
    
 

Post Tue, Aug 10 2010, 8:32 am
PinkFridge wrote:
It is a very strange world. Governor Patterson is wearing a red thread because, why not. We're going back to the days of the Greeks where all idols are ok, as long as you don't say that only mine is. So you would think that radical Islam would be a complete no no to the left.
BUT the western world has a hard time imagining that there's absolute evil in the world. So they deny that there is any institutionalized absolute evil in the Moslem world which allows them to dabble in this idolatry and pick and choose the exotic features that enchant them.

I don't know if I'm at all being clear. I've thought about this and simply can't figure out another way to explain why liberal women - speakers of the house, first ladies down - aren't leading the way.


Pink Fridge...there it is! You said it! Perfectly..this Panglossian view the Left has that we are living in the Best of All Possible worlds and people are only cruel because they need "help"

Then again, how to explain leftists like Harold Pinter, may he find peace in the next world, a playwright I once admired greatly, but who late in life became vehemently anti Israel (he is Jewish) and even appeared an Al Jezeera yimach shemim..! And he was an advocate of Women's rights! so how did he bridge this inconsistency? (and there are many like him)
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sequoia




 
 
    
 

Post Tue, Aug 10 2010, 8:58 am
Yes this is what I don't understand. Even clear-thinking individuals like Hitchens, for whose recovery we should daven, engage in this double-think when it comes to Israel, although anyone with a modicum of sense could see that life is hell under Hamas!

I just want people to be okay, I want them to be well. I want them to live in peace and security, not in fear.

The Soviet regime never went to such extremes, but even so, Soviet dissidents were heartened and encouraged by Western support. But today the Western world is abandoning Iranian dissidents, abandoning those who are in danger and suffering in their societies, abandoning human rights!

It goes something like this:
"I am for women's rights."
"Well, those women over there are going to be stoned to death because they are suspected of adultery. That nine-year-old girl is going to be married to a seventy-year-old man, and that teenage girl has just been disfigured with acid thrown in her face."
"Oh... must be off, can't stop all day to chat!"

It's incomprehensible. Where is your compassion?! Left, right, whatever -- where is your normal human compassion?
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JRKmommy




 
 
    
 

Post Tue, Aug 10 2010, 10:22 am
Agreed.

Racism - I've participated a lot of discussions on this topic on non-Jewish forums, and the implicit racism even among those who believe that they are supporting Palestinians is quite astounding.

When I'd point out that it was totally illogical to claim that the goal of the Palestinian leadership was simply to have a peaceful 2-state solution when they launch a torrent of horrific attacks against civilians after rejecting a far-reaching offer from Israel - I kept getting the response that you can't expect oppressed people to be logical. Well...I believe that a basic ability to use your brain and to make moral decisions is part of what defines us as human. I see Palestinians as being human. Humans can make bad, or even evil choices. It's okay to say that. I think that it's preferable to describing an entire group of people as mentally and morally incompetent.

Similarly, I'm also shocked at how often I come across the "we can't judge other cultures" line. Let me describe just how absurd this argument is to me personally: I could go on a site like Babycenter and argue all day that spanking is wrong and paddling in schools a barbaric practice; that society is wrong if it doesn't support nursing mothers or disapproves of nursing in public; that the United States is in the dark ages for not having better maternity leave or universal medicare or allowing gay marriage - and it was fine for me to say all of these things, even if people disagreed with my POV. However, if I mentioned cultural/religious oppression in other, more extreme forms - like an Iranian father demanding that his teenage daughters have vaginal exams to prove their virginity, or a 15 yr old in Iran being forced into an arranged marriage with an abusive older man, or a Pakistani wife and child being abused and rejected by the husband only to be told by her family to return to the abuser, or a young Pakistani bride being told by her husband that he has the religious right to beat her, or a Moroccan woman fearing that the entire community will go against her if she leaves the husband who beats her for not wearing a hijab, or a Somali woman ending up in the ICU with raging infections as a result of a previous gential mutilation in which her external genitalia were removed and her labia skin sewn together to block her vaginal opening.....well, that was another story. We can't judge others, after all....

Now, here's the irony: I'm a Jew from Toronto. I've never been to the Bible Belt in the United States, and I know very few white evangelical Christians IRL. When I got involved in those debates, I was criticizing a foreign culture and religious values. However, when I made the other comments, I was talking about cases in which dh or I had been personally involved, literally in our own backyard.

It is absolutely racist to care about only the rights of women who happen to live in predominantly white, Christian societies.

Dr. Mom also had an excellent point when it comes to anti-Israel criticism. I remember reading something by Thomas Friedman where he pointed out that the Western world is obsessed by Jews/Israel - but it doesn't particularly care about Palestinians EXCEPT to the extent that they are victims of Jews/Israelis. They are seen as objects, not subjects.
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sequoia




 
 
    
 

Post Tue, Aug 10 2010, 10:29 am
JRKmommy wrote:
I could go on a site like Babycenter and argue all day that spanking is wrong and paddling in schools a barbaric practice; that society is wrong if it doesn't support nursing mothers or disapproves of nursing in public; that the United States is in the dark ages for not having better maternity leave or universal medicare or allowing gay marriage - and it was fine for me to say all of these things, even if people disagreed with my POV. However, if I mentioned cultural/religious oppression in other, more extreme forms - like an Iranian father demanding that his teenage daughters have vaginal exams to prove their virginity, or a 15 yr old in Iran being forced into an arranged marriage with an abusive older man, or a Pakistani wife and child being abused and rejected by the husband only to be told by her family to return to the abuser, or a young Pakistani bride being told by her husband that he has the religious right to beat her, or a Moroccan woman fearing that the entire community will go against her if she leaves the husband who beats her for not wearing a hijab, or a Somali woman ending up in the ICU with raging infections as a result of a previous gential mutilation in which her external genitalia were removed and her labia skin sewn together to block her vaginal opening.....well, that was another story. We can't judge others, after all....



What a vivid illustration. Wow. Salut
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WriterMom




 
 
    
 

Post Tue, Aug 10 2010, 11:01 am
Nothing to add except ITA.

Except sadly I've moved beyond being enraged a lot of the time; partly for the sake of my blood pressure, I just avoid dealing with people like that wherever I can. I have friends who take them on, on the off chance that they'll change their minds. I don't know if it ever works, and can't muster the strength to try.

This is a good reality check, though, I think I'll remember this thread next time I read a particularly partisan and appalling news story.
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