The Atlantic - Latest Comments in M00slim-Lovin Media Elites

Re: M00slim-Lovin Media Elites

martin peretz dispenser — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 10:48:11 -0000

You know, if anything the mainstream coverage has shied away from looking at his religion. It's hinted at, but not really asked overtly. I wonder if the Daily Show would ever make a montage about this?

I think extremist Christianity has been examined quite a bit, in relation to the anti abortion movement. Maybe not on ABC News, but you can find it on say, The Nation.

Re: M00slim-Lovin Media Elites

msbadger — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 00:36:04 -0000

Out of all these comments, yours seems to capture it the best for me. The external reason, religion, mission, agenda, whatever is just the trigger. "Teh krazy" is the bullet. Thanks to all who made comments, this is endlessly fascinating despite the tragedy at its core. It's always good to observe others thought processes and beliefs. Once again, thanks to TNC for these threads.

Re: M00slim-Lovin Media Elites

MikeR — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 12:46:29 -0000

Anna, I believe that certain ideologies lend themselves to evil crazies. And others do not. Don't know if you're going to include communism and fascism in your list of religions, but you might as well.

Anyhow, today in America, there are extremist religions that help crazy and/or evil people think about doing violence, and other varieties of religions that don't. I want people to follow the latter, and I want us to think about when the former might be causing trouble.

Goodness, is there anyone on the left who wasn't concerned that extremist anti-abortionists were lending themselves to violence? As they should be. What about the concern that the Tea Partiers were a danger. (There there was no evidence, near as I can see; violence at town meetings was largely by the SEIU - but that's outside our issue.)

What I don't understand is why any of this is controversial. We don't want people operating under belief systems, religious or not, that cause them to break the laws and hurt people. When violence happens, it's perfectly reasonable to investigate whether the person's belief system was involved.

Re: M00slim-Lovin Media Elites

MikeR — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 12:38:55 -0000

No one is proposing to excise anything from the American psyche. We can, however, make acting on it illegal, and we should.

We certainly aren't helping by pretending it's not there, or by pretending that everyone does it. Natural is not the same thing as acceptable.

Re: M00slim-Lovin Media Elites

Erik Vanderhoff — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 10:59:37 -0000

We can't allow that kind of attitude inside American society.

My point, which I thought I made fairly clear (and therefore why it's relevant), is that the attitude I describe is "basic, atavistic stuff." It's intrinsic to human nature wherever groups gather. The idea that we can excise it from American society at some sort of fundamental level is pie-in-the-sky utopianism.

Re: M00slim-Lovin Media Elites

russd — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 10:19:35 -0000

Jeff asks what we'd say if a devout Christian had attacked Planned Parenthood. Fair enough--we have a pretty good corollary in George Tiller. I could be wrong, but I don't recall a lot of "media elites" trying to divine what Tiller's death said about Christianity, itself. Again, beyond the fact that some wacko interpreted Christianity to mean he had the right to shoot people, what else would there be to say?

Exactly. A devout Christian would not commit murder, nor might I add, would a devout Muslim. Neither religion justifies wanton killing in their teachings. Inflammartory rhetoric from extremist Christians is just as dangerous and misguided as any radical Imam (sp?).

Re: M00slim-Lovin Media Elites

msb — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 05:08:26 -0000

Perhaps you have been lucky in your acquaintance with Christians. I see many self-described Christians in the media equating the President with Hitler and calling for resistance to and perhaps the overthrow of the government of the United States. Does their behaviour show that Christianity is inherently violent? (My answer would be no.)

Does your request apply to all religions, or is it a requirement for Muslims only? Did you ask moderate Christians to denounce/renounce violence after Dr Tiller’s murder or hatefulness after any of the activities of Fred Phelps? Did you ask moderate Jews and Israelis to denounce/renounce violence after an American immigrant to Israel shot up a mosque in Hebron during a service? If you did not, why is a violent Muslim an exemplar of his faith and a violent Christian/Jew the sick exception?

Re: M00slim-Lovin Media Elites

Marisa — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 03:11:05 -0000

Obviously there are as many bloody stories in the Bible as their are in the Quran. And obviously followers can pick which lessons they follow and which they overlook, for example overlooking the 10 Commandments, while quoting one line from Leviticus in order to justify a Constitutional amendment to limit gay rights. But, if moderate Muslims want to distinquish themselves from the radicals isn't it time that they renounce the concept of Jihad? It seems so obvious, but even as I write this, I think I understand why they have not done it: because Jihad is part of their doctrine, one of their responsibilies according to the Quran and they cannot say that they object to it even if they would not consider hurting another human being. The best they can do is say that they believe in the peaceful parts of the Quran. People do the same with the Bible, but there are differences in the order of magnitude. I have met many annoying, preachy Christian bigots, but not many that think waging a holy war is their responsibility as a Christian. I don't know any Christians who would think someone was a martyr for going onto a crowded bus in Iran and blowing up a bunch of civilians. I am in no way advocating discrimination or violence against Muslims, but I think we are ignoring the problem by just saying that Islam is about peace and that those who promote violence are distorting the message when there are so many that believe the opposite. If Islam is about peace, those that believe that need to renounce Jihad once and for all.

Re: M00slim-Lovin Media Elites

DougEMI — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 23:56:49 -0000

Still, don’t you think it might have shown a bit of humanity on the part of certain Fox News personalities to publically acknowledge the need for them to tone down their rhetoric…..on at least this specific issue?

I am a fairly irregular viewer of Fox News, so I don't really know how they talk about the abortion issue, but as it relates to people like O'Reilly and Hannity who have a more editorial position, I completely argee that they should come out in full force against what happened in this instance if they didn't do so.

Re: M00slim-Lovin Media Elites

Jane Doe II — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 21:48:34 -0000

There are many factors to consider regarding the lack of violence, as you put it.

I think that one thing we don't always consider is that the culture in Europe and America is not identical...I think in many European countries, France in particular, for example, it is much more common for large scale strikes to occur than is the case here anymore. There are many other factors. Demographics, history, presence or absence of a spark, shoot, maybe even weather on a given day plays a role.

Besides that...people respond differently to oppression and adversity. Some places in the world undergo violent revolution and some places do not. Is the determining factor whether one group "has it better" than the other? Nothing so simple or convenient will do as an explanation.

I mean, why does violence or rioting erupt at any point in history? There are a ton of factors that go into any given situation that make it hard to say without a really systematic investigation into each individual incident (or trend of related incidents). Why did riots erupt after the Rodney King verdict but not after the situation with Amadou Diallo? Was it because one was worse than the other (whatever that actually means)? Not from what I can tell. A bunch of factors go into these things, and it's fairly simplistic to boil it down to "these people have it better than these other people."

France is not the USA. The Muslim community in France is not the Muslim community in the USA. The Muslim community in the USA even has quite a bit of variation in norms depending on which region of the country you live in. My experiences living in a pretty diverse part of the country with a large number of Muslims varies fairly significantly from other people I know who live in other types of areas where the situation is different. So there is no magic bullet answer.

Re: M00slim-Lovin Media Elites

Guest — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 20:45:55 -0000

Please don't misunderstand me Jane.

If you want to make the argument that Muslim-Americans have a harder time of it today than I might think, I will not press any contradictory point. I'm not going to be pompous, you are a Muslim-American, you know better than me on this particular subject.

I just trying to understand. Why the lack of violence in America then? If the average Muslim living in New York City, USA is not better off than the same Muslim living in Paris, France, why don't we have the same kind of violence in the streets here?

Re: M00slim-Lovin Media Elites

Guest — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 20:16:30 -0000

Perhaps it depends on how you view terrorism. As I've said, I view terrorism as war through unconventional means. Like more conventional warfare, sometimes it's justified, most of the time it's not. But when I look at Northern Ireland, at Lebanon, at Sri Lanka.....I see conflict from politics, from religion to some extent. I have no doubt that the people who engaged in the terrorist acts were unhappy with their lives. But not the kind of alienation from society that motivated the 9/11 attackers.

I really think the 9/11 attackers were not your typical terrorists. Perhaps that's the source of our disagreement?

Your average terrorist, while not being that bright, can connect his unhappiness with his politics a little better than you give them credit for. They just don't wallow aimlessly in a sense of alienation, then find terrorism as a direction to help guide their lives.

Or maybe we just need to agree to disagree on this. We can agree on this though, neither one of us has the time to spend on here, not as much as we'd like anyway. But yes, always a pleasure.

Re: M00slim-Lovin Media Elites

Jane Doe II — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 20:10:29 -0000

@ Nuada...I really don't know what is up with the reply thing...anyway. This is in response to your message below.

Andre Carson is the other Muslim in Congress.

You get to live your life in peace for the most part, don't you? You and people of your same religious faith get to work hard and hope for a better tomorrow, just like any other American?

I guess it depends on what you mean by "living your life in peace."

Certainly, our situation could be much worse. But it could be much better too. If "living life in peace" and "working hard and hoping for a better tomorrow" is the yardstick, then there is not much difference in America and Europe (which was the original point I was replying to) and we don't have much of a reason to pat ourselves on the back on this side of the pond.

No, I don't have bombs raining down on my head. I am quite grateful for that. But since 9/11, members of the Muslim community have been subjected to all sorts of things, indefinite detentions, surveillance in our houses of worship as a matter of course, profiling at the airports, spikes in hate crimes and vandalism (one friend of mine has had at least four separate incidents where she was harassed verbally and/or in danger of being assaulted because she is visibly Muslim--I hardly call that "living in peace"). These types of incidents increase especially at times like this. We've had to listen to our (former) president talk about waging "crusades", being ejected from public places for wearing Islamic dress, etc. Muslims have had law enforcement called on them because other people observed them praying in public. I could go on and on. Some of these offenses have been committed by public officials--so it's not just the "bigots".

I guess if you don't have to live with it, it may not seem that bad. But from where I'm standing, we have a long way to go as a nation.

Re: M00slim-Lovin Media Elites

anna perez — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 19:59:40 -0000

It means the mother fucker was "Columbine Crazy," "Osama Bin Laden Crazy," "Unibomber Crazy," "Charlie Manson Crazy," "Going Postal Crazy," "Tim McVeigh Crazy." If you are crazy enough to want to kill a lot of innocent people, you're going to find a "reason" to do so.

Re: M00slim-Lovin Media Elites

Sorn — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 19:46:27 -0000

But do you think that you are stretching a bit to say that almost all terrorism is primarily motivated from feelings of alienation?

I don't think so. In the main well-satisfied resonably well adjusted people with a stake in the status quo who feel that they are an integral part of society don't resort to violence.

Many apologies because I don't have time to reply to everything you wrote today but I shall get back to you.

Thanks for reading and taking time to reply. Always a pleasure.

Re: M00slim-Lovin Media Elites

anna perez — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 19:42:37 -0000

"If his religion was an important cause..." For centuries, crazy fuckers have used religion to justify their heinous acts of violence: mass murder, slavery, subjugation of women and children. You name it, and crazy fuckers have used religion to justify it. I say this as confirmed agnostic: its never the religion, its the crazy.

Re: M00slim-Lovin Media Elites

Guest — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 19:42:09 -0000

I suppose generally is an imprecise word by it's vary nature.

And I do not want to discount anything you said because, after all, it's your life

I have no doubt Muslim-Americans have to deal with a lot of unfair crap. I didn't mean to suggest that America generally accepting Muslims means that all Americans accept Muslims. Yes, there are bigots and someday, they might just receive their reward.

But Mr. Ellison is living his life as Congressman Ellison and I believe there is another Muslim-American Congressperson in Washington as well. You are living your life, doing whatever it is you do. My representative in the state house, of the state where I live, is a Muslim-American. He's an African-American Muslim-American actually.

You get to live your life in peace for the most part, don't you? You and people of your same religious faith get to work hard and hope for a better tomorrow, just like any other American?

If not, why don't we see more religious violence in this country?

Re: M00slim-Lovin Media Elites

Josh Jasper — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 19:00:25 -0000

That ain't stopping one of the best known "Christian" activist groups in America from calling for a permanent (until "Muslims give us a foolproof way to identify their jihadis from their moderates,") purge

Think we'll hear many Republicans denouncing the AFA for fomenting religious war?

Re: M00slim-Lovin Media Elites

Jane Doe II — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 18:59:58 -0000

For some folks at least, it means that they have license to indulge their prejudices.

Re: M00slim-Lovin Media Elites

Jane Doe II — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 18:55:07 -0000

This reply is actually to Nuada above, but it wouldn't let me...

Anyways.

That is actually a very good point. But it begs the question; why are American-Muslims different?

There are many differences in demographics and the situation on the ground in America and Europe that serve to make the communities somewhat different, and I don't think it is that America "accepts" its Muslims as fully American. For one thing, as a rule, America restricted for a while the types of people who could immigrate here from certain parts of the Muslim world, with the result that many educated immigrants from the Arab world and South Asia especially came here, there less educated brethren who wanted to get out went to Europe in larger numbers. Another factor to consider is that America, unlike most European countries, has a rather large number of indigenous Muslims. At least a third and perhaps higher, depending on whose stats you consult, of American Muslims are African American. This brings in a whole other dynamic of "being accepted as fully American".

I do think, however, that while as an (African) American Muslim I don't always feel like others view me and my co-religionists as fully American, (though in general, I personally don't really care...my right to be here is not anyone else's to determine), I think you are correct in that there is somewhat greater integration in the US vs Europe where Muslims are concerned. The Keith Ellison incident, while inspiring in how he handled it, we shouldn't forget that his decision to use that *particular* copy of the Qur'an was in fact a response to a bunch of fear mongering on the part of some very vocal bigots who thought the idea of a US congressman taking the oath of office on some book other than the Bible was quite un-American. So the "acceptance" is still not quite there.

As a Muslim, and a black person for that matter, the whole routine of being blamed and having to be responsible for what somebody does who looks/believes like you just gets weary. I, nor anyone else at this point, knows what motivated this man.

Re: M00slim-Lovin Media Elites

Guest — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 18:48:54 -0000

@ Carrington

Thank you for the heads up.

I did some on-line searching and found the lyrics. They reminded me a bit of that song from the 1990’s, “Zombie”.

That’s not to say that the Cranberries will go down in history like Mr. Stan Rogers did, who apparent made quite the name for himself.

Re: M00slim-Lovin Media Elites

Guest — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 18:37:39 -0000

Sorn –

You’ll have to forgive me; you confused me just a bit with your reply above.

I was only trying to specifically address what DougEMI wrote in his post. I was only trying to say that the Tiller murder – Fox News connection was somewhat stronger than any Census worker – Right Wing Personalities connection, largely because absolutely no connection can honestly be made yet for the latter.

It was not my intention to attempt to construct some moral equivalency between right & left. The overall topic is terrorism; a subject so varied that I would not even attempt any general classifications of right and left.

You bring up the Tea Baggers. Maybe I’m just being too fair but I never would have made the connection between terrorism and a bunch of pudgy aging white people who can’t accept the fact that their guy didn’t win.

Since you opened up that can of worms, I’ll say that I never thought of southern populism as a chief motivation of the Tea-Baggers. Unless of course, you are using “southern populism” as a euphemism for something else. After all, how do we know what part of the country the Tea-Baggers are coming from?

No, if I was to be at my most humane and look upon the motivation of the Tea-Baggers, the best that I could possibly do is replace their hate-based motivations with stupidity or fear. Although I know that you weren’t originally referring to me, you can now call me a “die-hard partisan” if you want. I’ll just say in closing that over the 12 years that I have been eligible to vote, I have voted for Republicans for both a Governorship and a US Senate seat.

Re: M00slim-Lovin Media Elites

Guest — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 17:59:47 -0000

“As an aside, I have seen nothing to convince me that this is at all a big problem for American Muslims. If I were in Paris, where "angry foreign youths" have been known to burn a thousand cars a night for weeks, I think the conclusion might be quite different.”

That is actually a very good point. But it begs the question; why are American-Muslims different?

I would argue it is because American society, in general, fully accepts Muslim-Americans to be as American as anyone else. Take the case of Keith Ellison; a Muslim-American gets sworn into our federal legislative body, using the holy book of his religion and uses a copy that just happened to once be owned by one of our nation’s founders. That says something about America than can’t be duplicated in a lot of other non-Muslim majority countries.

But…..considering that America does not have the kind of violence that certain European countries suffer through, perhaps we should be carefully before we start deciding on any kind of test. Least we inspire such violence by accusing anyone of divided loyalties or something. Note, I’m not saying that is what you are doing, only that I can see how things could go down that path.

Re: M00slim-Lovin Media Elites

Guest — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 17:34:36 -0000

“In almost every case of confirmed terrorism that I can think of the ideology is of secondary importance to the feeling of alienation.”

You seem like a well-educated person, so I’m guessing that you are familiar with many cases of confirmed terrorism, or else you wouldn’t have posted in the first place.

But do you think that you are stretching a bit to say that almost all terrorism is primarily motivated from feelings of alienation? I’m not saying it isn’t often present but you are saying that it’s the chief cause.

To me, terrorism has always been a form of warfare, a form you engage in when your enemy has tanks, bombs and planes and you do not. To the extent that terrorism can be justified, I think it depends on various factors; an origin in a legitimate ideological grievance, an attainable end goal that can be logically derived from the violence that you commit, the strict targeting of military forces and not civilian populations, etc.

Young men go to war for lots of different reasons, often times the motivations are political, albeit not very developed.

Let’s just stick to terrorist or “somewhat terroristic” conflicts. (Wow, that’s actually a word.) The three main groups that have indentified themselves as the I.R.A. over the last 80 years have had one clear political goal, get the Brits out. I’m sure that some of the 9/11 high-jackers were motivated by feelings of alienation but Bin Laden wasn’t, he had a very clear political goal as well.

I think that this Fort Hood case is a prime example of exactly what you are talking about. But I think Hassan, while not the exception, was certainly not the rule.

Are we talking about just those terrorists that plan to kill themselves as part of their terrorism? What about the ones that clearly want to live?

And you say;

“If I was to paint a picture of a terrorist he or she would probably be someone of above average intelligence capable of working hard, who felt, for whatever reason, incapable of achieving a desired goal.”

I know the picture you have in your mind; the 9/11 terrorists that had engineering degrees. But they weren’t all college grads, I don’t think.

Tim McVeigh was no genus, was he? And sure, the Klan big-wigs have always been educated, from Forrest, to Simmons, to Duke. But the garden-variety torch burners, the majority of them have been just plain dumb sons of bitches. They had a goal in mind, albeit not very developed and morally repugnant; no black equality. Did they feel alienated? The former plantation owners did, I’m sure but the poor Southern whites didn’t get any poorer after the Civil War. In reality, slavery probably hurt the poor white underclass by artificially suppressing wages.

Re: M00slim-Lovin Media Elites

Sorn — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 17:04:53 -0000

Nuada,

If I may this isn't manichean. In fairness the climate is made worse when news organizations publically spew exremist garbage but most people are not going to be taken in and believe everything they watch. Yes it would have shown some humanity on the part of some Fox News anchors to tone down their rhetoric. It would also require some humanity for certain die hard partisans to look past the southern populism and ask themselves "what's causing the T-Partiers to go ape shit?"

This isn't an argument for moral equivalence of left vs. right, but rather an attempt to understand the underlying structural causes that would prompt someone to become committed to violence in an attempt to find meaning.