DomFortress wrote:

But when your Islamic faith regulates even your social life, what's not to say you're ignoring the social status quote?

quintus_fontane wrote:

It makes me angry, it really, really does.

Not Islam, not terrorism, not the wars, but the ignorance that infects almost all people on all sides of this brewing religious shitstorm. People forming well-entrenched opinions even though they haven't looked at both sides, the Chinese whispers that start in regards to a news story, and people's plain, straight-up refusal to listen to reason, regardless of the source. Also how easily people are swayed by the media. Has anyone else noticed how quickly our reason for invading Iraq changed from "Oh crap they've got WMD's" to "Liberating the Iraqi people"? And no one bats an eyelid, they just soak it up like a sponge, and prepare some more wild patriotism and blind faith in their government, with the image of the twin towers and London bombings burned into their minds.

"If tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy." - John Adams, 2nd US President.

Here in the north west of England, we have a fairly high percentage of muslim folk, have done since the 60's. We've had riots, demonstrations, random beatings and revenge attacks in the street (Of which I myself have been on the recieving end of a couple of times), yet this is nothing compared to what will come unless people start to form some balanced opinions. It's a prime case of ignorance meeting ignorance head on, with everyone else, Muslim and otherwise, in the middle just trying to bloody get on with their lives. We have the chav problem, predominantly whites, who attack people and property for no reason other than prejudice and that they can. I myself lost a very good friend to them, and needless to say these are the epitome of 'Ignorant whites' here.

I have quite a few muslim mates from both school and ones i've made since, and this is what people just don't understand. A lot of them are scared. Scared of the constant media barrage that tars them all with the same brush, scared of how people soak up what they see on TV, scared of the ignorance displayed by both a minority from their culture and some whites, and definately scared of what's coming next. As a result, very few from Britain's Muslim communities are willing to speak out, and this is a crying shame because that is precisely what we need right now: Normal British Muslims standing up and saying "Now hang on a minute, this tool who just blew himself up in no way represents the rest of us", and even if they did, people here are so wrapped up in their own misgivings and prejudice i'm not even sure they'd listen.

The best and most recent examples of ignorance at play on a grand scale are the New York mosque and Quran burning fiascos. There are still many, many people who actually think the plan was to build the mosque on top of the bloody rubble. There are also a lot of folk who firmly believe it's their right to burn the Quran, and don't understand why they're so upset about the prospect of it, and also don't see the ramifications of it. People have already bloody DIED because of it, and none have even been burned!

And at the last, not only is there the ignorance, the willful ignorance here, but there's also the inability to understand why we're being attacked by minority terrorist groups in the first place. You see it every day on forums both here on CR and on various other sites, people saying without a hint of doubt that invading a nation in response to a terrorist attack is justified.

Take the probable causes of the terrorism in the first place, the interference, the meddling, the butting our collective western noses into their business, extortion, gunboat diplomacy and the threat of it, exploitation, not really a small, insignificant list all told. It doesn't warrant killing innocent people over, but welcome to humanity; some of us are dicks. Take that to one side, just put it on the sideboard for a minute. Imagine if ten years ago a group of 20-30 Americans went to Dubai and bombed some religious buildings. Imagine it. Then imagine waking up one morning in your cosy little house in England or the US, looking out your window and seeing Saudi tanks rolling past your house.
Would you be pleased to see them? Would you care that they say they're there to eradicate the subversive cells of extremists and to free you from your oppressive government? Would you?
If you said yes, then you're either painfully naive or lying.

Add to that even more Chinese whispers, and what starts out as an accident turns into a NATO led massacre by the time the news has reached 10 villages away. Add in some ignorance and anger, anger at foreign troops on your streets, anger at western meddling in your affairs, anger that your uncle was accidentally killed by an airstrike. Yeah you're pretty pissed right now, so pissed in fact you take up an AK at the gentle urgings of an extremist Imam and join the 'resistance'. It's human nature, despite what some people may say, to want to defend your home, and this makes you extremely susceptible to persuasion and being coerced into doing things you otherwise wouldn't do.

No one is willing to try and see things from any perspective but their own, and this situation the world is being flung into now is only going to get worse. Afghanistan is unwinnable for the simple reason that we're fighting an endless army. For every accident, for every action, for every month that our troops are over there we simply push more and more impressionable young Muslims all round the world over the threshold into extremism, and contrary to popular belief this war will not make things better, it will only increase the likelihood that you or your children or your friends will be killed on day when you're out shopping by some pissed off, disillusioned young Muslim who was vulnerable to being 'turned'.

And it will be our own fault.

I don't care if you don't follow their religion.
I don't care if you don't understand it.
I don't care if you hate middle eastern bloody cooking or the clothes they wear.
You don't have to do anything other than calm the fuck down. Mohammed in your local gas station is not about to murder your children, he's just a dude trying to get on with his life, same as you. We can't help who we're born as, but we can change who we become. No matter your race, colour or creed, people are just people. We're good, bad, and most often, somewhere in between. People the world over need to grow some perspective or remove themselves from everyone elses affairs entirely, otherwise we're all going to find ourselves in a world of shit, far, far sooner than we think.

DomFortress wrote:

It's only due to a lack of true courage that things didn't turn out so well in the past for us, IMHO: