Muslim is the new Jew.Follow

Too bad about the whole church and state separation thing.

Oh, THAT'S why? I thought it was because so many think he's a Muslim.

God is the dwellingplace of the universe, Varrus, the fabric that the universe is made of. God is the energy that matter is made of, The universe is one undivided being, and that being is God. We are all part of that one undivided being, and that being exists at all time, past, present and future.

As we peer through puny individual human minds, with obscured perception, not perceiving the Whole at once, we only perceive the dimension of time chopped up instant by instant, instead of as one Whole in extension. We only perceive the bits during which our individual human bodies are alive, unless we are lucky enough to have a glimpse of connection into the trancendant.

God is All that is happening now. This part of God has moved on from the Stone Age, Varus. God thought all adults deserve a vote, black, white, female, male, land-owner, non-land-owner. God thought condoms and pills. God thought legalised abortions, right or wrong. God thought electricity and mass manufacturing and taxes and welfare and anti-welfare ideas.

God is the tree on the street, and the rosemary outside your door, and the gay man over the road, and the single mother next to him, and the Muslim family next to her. God is the houses they live in, the electricity that runs through them and the furniture inside. God is the Bible on your shelf, and the Koran on theirs. God is the water drowning Pakistan and the people drowning in the water, and pulling each other out of it, and shivering on hospital beds with their eyes rolled back with dehydration. God is you Varus and God is me.

Hate my ideas all you like Varus, rail against them, despise me. I am irrevocably part of you and you are irrevocably part of me. If you don't know that, you haven't seen God.

Edited, Aug 31st 2010 2:48pm by Aripyanfar

I was reading some pollster or another who suspects that not so many think he's actually Muslim so much as people who don't like Obama are more likely to give what they perceive the "worst possible choice" during polling.

He hasn't replied yet. God-as-Ari appears to have out-religioned God-as-Varus without even believing in Jesus Christ dying on his cross within one day, and coming back to life three days later, and then ascending physically bodily into Heaven, (removing energy out of the physical universe) AND being the only path to transcendence; the only path to awareness of being at one with God/Everything/the Universe.

Fuck Varus.

I like *************

Get it, get it?


Edit: damn timing, you couldn't have replied just a little later after that break?

For someone who doesn't hate me, you sure use denigrating language. Are you sure you're happy with your people skills?

Edited, Aug 31st 2010 3:21pm by Aripyanfar

Aripya,

Just think of it as tough love.

Just so we can skip ahead 1-3 Varus posts, he's going to reply "Love the sinner, not the sin."

Just sayin'.

Ding ding ding. Which is why when we say Varus is crazy for hating all Muslims, it rings true. Or saying that Muslims are discriminated against, it's true. Many terrorists are Muslim; not all Muslims are terrorists. But they are being associated with terrorists even when there is nothing besides a similar label. Like how some liberals are Communists, and some conservatives are terrorists.

That's the point. They are connected in the name, but that's it. There is no other connection, but it keeps getting made over and over. Hence why we have a shift from saying "Al Qaeda is dangerous" to "Islam is dangerous." Even you must see that...

Yes, of course. But I also see the shift going in the other direction, where anyone who advocates action against groups like Al Queda, or Hamas, or Hezbolla, is labeled as simply attacking Islam and called a hater of Islam. It seems foolish to be so concerned about the small number of people like Varus who say things like "Islam is to blame!" that we avoid taking actions we need to take against real threats.


I would also speculate that there are more people making that reverse connection than the other way around. Just a guess, of course, but it does seem that way. I hear many many times more people arguing that by acting against recognized terrorist groups, or even just calling them terrorist groups, we are somehow attacking all Muslims than I hear arguing that all Muslims are terrorists. Even in this thread, we've had that assumption implied at least a few times.

Concerned in the sense that a crime has been committed? Sure. Concerned any more than that? Not really. Do you honestly think this is more than some isolated incident by a small group of people? News flash. Occasionally, churches of all types are targeted by bigots. Catholic churches, Protestant churches, Jewish synogogues, and yes, Muslim mosques all occasionally get targeted in some way. But the rates of these things are incredibly low compared to most other nations in the world, and we do pretty universally condemn the actions.

I think it's a gross over reaction to turn this into a larger political issue. I seem to recall that same mosque construction site (or one with a really similar sign) being targeted for vandalism several weeks (maybe a month or more?) ago. I'm going to go with "local problem", then the assumption that this is somehow connected to the ground zero mosque issue, which I'm assuming is why you think this is a bigger issue.

This is *exactly* how I perceive the WTC attack.

No, it's not. It's being conflated with the ground zero mosque in order to make it appear as though the opposition to that mosque is based on the same bigotry, just on a much larger scale. The vandalism at the Murfreesboro site started long before the ground zero mosque became a national issue. They are unrelated. Certainly, the opposition to the building of the ground zero mosque did not "spread" somehow to other areas, as some are trying to imply.



Without being too obvious, if a group of Christians had destroyed the WTC in the name of their religion, I suspect you'd see the same kind of opposition to a giant mega church being built there as well. You're trying to compare apples to oranges here. The opposition to the ground zero mosque is based on the inappropriateness of building such a large structure dedicated to the same religion which led those attackers to destroy the WTC within sight of the remains of said building(s).

It's a national issue exactly because it has implications on a national level. The people of NY were not the only people attacked on 9/11. The entire country was. Regardless of the motives or meaning associated with the building of that mosque in the US by those building it, it will be seen as a victory by the very groups who attacked us on that day if it's raised at that location.



Where? If anything we're bending over backwards to *not* target them. I think you are drinking the kool-aid if you think that this is happening to any significant degree. If anything, Muslims in the US are much higher profile and presented with positive imagery today than they were before 9/11, largely thanks to significant amounts of PR work deliberately designed to do just this. You almost can't turn on a TV show today without noting the inclusion of Muslim characters, which was almost unheard of just 10 years ago.

Meanwhile, Christians in most Muslim countries are being beaten, threatened, jailed, and killed at an increasing rate. I'm not at all turning this into an "us versus them" situation, but it would be nice if we at least used some kind of rational measuring stick to apply to ourselves. What you seem to want to do is insist on perfection, and when it's not achieved, blame some kind of broad anti-Muslim plot or something.


Do you actually think the average Mulsim citizen of the US is less safe today than they were 10 years ago? Why? Aside from the days immediately after the 9/11 attacks, the US has been pretty calm about this. It's unlikely that any population in any other nation in the world would have show as much restraint as those in the US did. And today? It's pretty much a non-issue. So yeah. I'm going to suggest that the fear of anti-Muslim sentiment is far far more prevalent than actual anti-Muslim sentiment.