Now, now MAtt. Nice little diversionary tactic, but yuo failed. You passed off a statement as fact, and it's not. Something you've done many times before. Period. I never said you claim absolute knowledge? Why not respond to what I said, not what you feel like responding to. And you wanted me to say that Georg bush imprisons people because he's sadistic, but I didn't and nor do I believe that. You're imputing to me what you wanted me to say, why don't you stick with what I said. So you honestly believe that, if they found a person who is very similar to someone who found themselves locked up at guantanamo after the afghanistan war would go there today, there's just no person who is? That's quite an assumption. Boy oh boy.
Nope, I hadn't seen your post until just now. Thanks for the links. I note the annual report on the CAIR site. http://www.cair.com/cair2006report/ I am trying to find some posts linking these stats to the non-Mulsim civil rights complaints. My sense is that one of the links is very true. That we have had a spike and with the recent elections as well as recent cases against the administration, that the tide is turning in terms of anti-Muslim hate. I think you see some of that on the CAIR site.
I did not pass off a statement as fact. Our president still has the power to imprision people persuant to the WOT. There is no reason to believe that power is not still used. But to claim that if all of a sudden popular opinion changed that the government would start sweeping more people up, innocent or not, in ever increasing rates because they can is the height of speculation without justification. That was your original question. Because you didn't say anything. You never gave a reason WHY imprisionments and torture would increase. You only said it would without any motive. Can you please answer the WHY for me? This paragraph makes no gramatical sense. Couly you please clarify?
I can't answer that, since I never lived in the US. There's a undeniable feeling of resentment towards Muslims in Western Europe, but it has rarely lead to any real violence, although there have been a few isolated incidents. On the other hand, exactly how many % of the population in the US are Muslims? There are cities in Western Europe where Muslims make up 30-40% of the inhabitants. I'm not saying that's a problem in itself, just that taking those numbers into consideration, bigotry, prejudice and tensions ignited by religious differences are far more likely than in communities that are dominated by one religion. Before I get attacked for this, I'm not saying that communities that have large Muslim minorities are a problem. They are an integral part of Europe, regardless of how some backward types all over Europe feel about them. But any person who hardly encounters a significant number of Muslims in his day to day life and says he isn't prejudiced towards them, might be truthfull, but his statement remains hollow. So my question remains: does the US have any comparable urban areas, where Muslims will be the majority within a generation?
Dearborn, for one. But I think you're correct in the larger sense--in America, the percentage of immigrants who are Muslim is smaller than in Europe. And our Muslims are better educated and have higher incomes than your Muslims. EDIT: I'm being glib, and not reading very carefully. I have no reason to believe that Muslims will be a majority in Dearborn ever. But they are a large minority there.
When elections are decided by less than 5% of votes, I would say that yes, 20% makes significantly more than a lick of difference.
....and, from what I understand, tend to generally be more moderate and more integrated into mainstream society. All of which is understandable, since someone living in Saudi Arabia or Algeria or to a lesser extent Pakistan can move to Europe a lot more cheaply than they can move to the US for geographic reasons. The average Mexican immigrant in Europe is probably economically better off than the average Mexican immigrant in the US for the same reason.
This is the statement you passed off as fact that you simply can not know. It's not fact. It's a guess (and my guess is that it's wrong). And yes, I'm talking about a hypothetical, so of course it's just speculation. But it's what I believe would happen if the president had free reign to do it. And I said what his motivation would be, intelligence, punishment, deterrence. As I said, he has shown a willingness to detain people with very little to go on. Since you're inventing a conversation that hasn't happened and criticizing me for it, I'm not engaging with you on this anymore. When you decide to debate using reason, and respond to my words rather than making something up to "win", let me know and maybe I'll talk to you again.
That's besides the point. The idea is that the Republican party does not advertise itself as being anti-Muslim. If it started doing that, its popularity would plummet. I have no reason to believe that a significant enough number of elected Republicans are anti-Muslim bigots. If they were, we wouldn't be accepting nearly as many immigrants from predominantly Muslim countries as we do under the current quotas. We've had six years of Republican hegemony, you'd think they would have done something by now. There are a lot of problems with the current incarnation of the Republican party, but bigotry is not one of them. I'm sorry but to me this thread is mostly baseless hysteria and paranoia. This is no different than paranoid Conservative Christians who think the Democrats hate Christianity and would impose all sorts of "Godless" laws when they're in power. Unless a candidate from the Constitution Party wins the 2008 presidential election, I'm not going to be concerned.
This is an interesting post. I think you cannot present that fact that the majority (nor a significant minority) of Dems are not ELF members and the jump to the conclusion that most Republicans are not Islamophobic. Most Dems are not into ELF--but plenty of them are into environmental protection. I personally don't approve of terrorism, even on environmental grounds, but I sometimes smile a little bit when reading about ELF. Sure they are extremists, but their actual actions are where they differ from many Dems, not over political orientation. To bring your analogy back to our subject, I suspect that many Reeps would disapprove of branding Muslims--but that doesn't stop them from being secretly Islamophobic.
I'm just wondering if we should link back to the Dubai Ports World thread to see which representitive sample of this board is Islamiphobic and which is not.
Really? The most recent numbers we have are that one third of US adults have an "unfavorable view" of Islam. A poll of evangelical and protestant leaders show that they - the leaders - 77% of them have an unfavorable view of Islam. "Only" 70% believe that Islam is a religion of violence. Does this equate to concentration camps for Muslims? No. But it clearly shows a ton of anti-Muslim sentiment. What percentage would go so far as to advocate concentration camps? I dunno. Enough that a radio host who mentioned it got numerous calls in support from a listener. That's too many. If the religion teaches violence and hatred, well - not only should we lock up Muslims we round up overseas and throw away the key (without a trial), but why shouldn't we do the same to the ones already in country? You folk saying it's "the fringe" and "nothing to worry about" are ********ING WRONG. Just look at the outrage over Keith Ellison's desire to simply take his oath of office on the Quran.
Didn't know it was Islamophobic to desire that foreign governments didn't control our port operations.
Maybe some. By the way, the answer to my question is "No, Muslims are not treated worse in the US than in Europe."