Supressed History

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DougB

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and yes, sometimes you have people doing bad things that should not reflect on everybody

Unfortunately blowing up the World Trade Centers / murdering over 3,000 people / shooting 100's of people at a time is a little more than a 'bad thing' (as you have put it, Terry). Further, unfortunately, the members of one ideology - Islam - have created this violent reputation for themselves. The peaceful followers of the Muslim religion must figure out how to rein in the crazies in their group. Surely, no outsider can. For the peaceful Muslims to sit on the side line, or give lip service it not enough.

There are/have been acts of violence against minority houses of worship: Jews, Blacks, maybe a few other sects. Probably a lot more than that against Mosques.

It's simplistic to say "I have customers from all faiths and religions" I think we all agree that you can believe what you want, and whatever you believe doesn't make you a 'bad person', nor should you be discriminated against.

It's unfortunate that the Muslim religion has not progressed / reformed since the 11th century - it's like not doing the term paper until the night before it's due - and now they're being hit in the face with the 21st century. Modernizing / catching up for 1,000 years is a bitch
 
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FullySprinklered

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Good God, Dana. I was wondering why my fruitcake was short a few nuts. Now I know.

I hope no one else wastes their breath trying to feed facts into your hate filled vision of the greatest thing that ever happened to humanity. The US.

You probably think I leave the house every morning to rape and pillage little old ladies and others who don't know how to do plumbing and electrical repairs.

You're a freakin’ dolt and a loser who doesn't know his ass from a hole in the ground.

You have such a nice way with words, though.

Terry, you're a super nice guy, but it's a tough world out there.
 

Dana

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Good God, Dana. I was wondering why my fruitcake was short a few nuts. Now I know.

I hope no one else wastes their breath trying to feed facts into your hate filled vision of the greatest thing that ever happened to humanity. The US.

You probably think I leave the house every morning to rape and pillage little old ladies and others who don't know how to do plumbing and electrical repairs.

You're a freakin’ dolt and a loser who doesn't know his ass from a hole in the ground.

You have such a nice way with words, though.

Terry, you're a super nice guy, but it's a tough world out there.


What hatred? Seriously?

I LOVE this country, and do so without having to put on magic rose-colored glasses for reading our history, or going on a simple minded cheer-leading session. This is a GREAT country, but it would be a mistake to assume that it's perfect, or doesn't have any problem chapters in it's history.

The US is the great experiment in self-rule, and a largely successful one so far, imitated and admired by others, including Muslim others, many of whom would prefer to live here, or remake their countries on US ideals, rule of law etc. (eg The Koreans refer to themselves as ethnically Hanguk (= Han people), and call the US "Miguk", yet the South Koreans have named their country "Han-Miguk", and have adopted quite a bit of US law & practices since losing their military dictatorship in the 1980s. It is still a work in progress, but WE are their aspirational model.)

I have ancestors (of the Puritan wingnut ilk) who came over on the Mayflower, and other colonial era Mennonite ancestors who fled religious persecution in Europe to settle in Pennsylvania & New York, as well as later immigrants who left the economic oppression in Ireland under the British rule to build the trans-pacific railroad, taking a Homestead Act plot in western Nebraska. There were plenty of folks already here who didn't think highly of my Catholic-Irish ancestors and their influence, and not very many approved of the anabaptist unitarian type teachings of my Mennonite ancestors either (but at least they weren't being tried, sentenced, and burned at the stake here.)

I really don't know what you do every morning, nor do I care. I don't think about it- this not in any way about YOU! It's about what Islam really is or is not, and about whether Muslims can live compatibly with the modernity. The Taliban/ISIS /Wahabist-conservatives/Al Qaeda and (apparently) you seem to be saying no, but that would be at odds with directly experienced reality. The aforementioned Islamic wingnuts are simply not representative of the majority of Muslims in the world.

Feed me facts? If only there were some actual facts mixed in with the invective! So far your input seems pretty light on content, despite having claims to having studied history.

If you have NetFlix or other video streaming services with foreign content, try watching some boring TV series produced in Muslim majority countries (production quality isn't always great), but you'll get a better idea of how real Muslims are managing with modernity than from self-promoters with an anti-Muslim agenda like Bill Warner. Most people are not fundamentalists, and most Muslims today are capable of using their brains to filter their history & scripture in the framework & full light of modernity, just as people of other religious traditions do. Bill Warner is full of crap, but finds an ready audience among those who have no familiarity, only suspicion about the "other".
 

Dana

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What does that mean?

I can't speak for the sprinkler, but I'd interpret that that as a self satisfied troll gloating over success at getting people bite at chum he threw into the water.

I took my own advice and watched a few episodes of a popular Paki-TV soap, Zindagi Gulzaar Hai (in Urdu literally "Life blossoming is", interpreted by the English subtitlers as "Life is wonderful") , over the weekend. A major theme being the tension between old school conservatives an modernity, feminism, and the class/caste differences. (It comes with fairly low TV-production values by US, UK, or Korean soap-opera standards, at least when viewed on NetFlix the audio track has a lot of aliasing artifacts & distortions, but if you're not trying to listen to the Urdu who cares? ;-) ) The protagonist is a 20-something MBA student from a less well-off middle class family dealing with the conservative patriarchs in her family as well as the stark class & privilege differences between her classmates and those of her (all-but divorced) mother & sisters. It's pretty clear that progressive-modernists are winning the culture wars in Pakistan, even among pious Muslims. It's a bit melodramatic & repetitive (it's IS a soap, after all! :) ), but offers some insights into the similarities & differences of modern south-Asian Muslim culture and west. Most of the conservative patriarchal aspects of Pakistani culture are identical with their Hindu cousins next door in the world's largest democracy.
 

Terry

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Church takes in Bellevue Muslim community after arson

http://komonews.com/news/local/church-takes-in-bellevue-muslim-community-after-arson

BELLEVUE, Wash. -- A neighboring church in Bellevue has given a local Muslim community a place to gather and pray after the community's mosque, the Islamic Center of the Eastside, was destroyed by arson.

“It’s really very simple,” Church Director of Public Affairs Gordon Wilson said. “It’s just neighbors helping neighbors. Jesus said, ‘Love your neighbor.’ They’re right next door. How can it be more obvious than that?”

“It was a surprise, and it was very heartwarming,” Islamic Center board member Shams Pirbhai said. “That means a lot to me and to our whole congregation.”

 

DougB

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I took my own advice and watched a few episodes of a popular Paki-TV soap, Zindagi Gulzaar Hai (in Urdu literally "Life blossoming is", interpreted by the English subtitlers as "Life is wonderful")

Life is wonderful: India's sanitation crisis:

https://www.google.com/search?q=ind...X&ved=0ahUKEwiqodmb4t3RAhUF94MKHT7aAj8QsAQIQw

India's Downward Spiral Accelerates: "The Real Pain Is Just Beginning"

Here are links to Part-I, Part-II, Part-III, Part-IV, Part-V, Part-VI, Part-VII, and Part-VIII, which not only provide updates on the demonetization saga, but explore and dissect India’s culture and why in this country of 1.34 billion - more than 1 out of every 6 human beings on the planet - so many exist in wretched poverty in this modern age, in an insect-like existence.

Oppression, exploitation, extreme stress, and the resulting millions of untimely deaths every year possibly make the story of the post-independent India one of the biggest crimes against humanity. Alas,it is getting worse.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-01-23/indias-downward-spiral-accelerates-real-pain-just-beginning

 

Dana

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DougB: I'm not exactly sure what relevance of India's myriad problems have in the content Pakistani popular culture, (though Zindagi Gulzaar Hai was wildly popular across caste & class lines in India too. ) Modernity may be only aspirational for most residents of south Asia, but modernity IS still the common aspiration, sought after and admired.

It's not exactly a hot news flash that India has lots of political, economic & human rights problems, or that Narendra Modi's populist-nationalist rise to power with the right wing BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party = Hindu Nationalist Party) hasn't come with some heavy costs and high anxiety, especially for the Muslim minority in that country. The BJP was widely seen as more the pro-business party during & after the election, but they're not exactly world-class economists, and nobody was assuming they would be able to correct many (or any) of India's major problems quickly (or at all.)

Many BJP hard liners & radicals have been encouraged by Trumpian anti-Muslim rhetoric, expecting to get more US support for the "Hindu" part of their Hindu-Nationalist agenda out of this US administration than they got out of Obama. OK, so they "took their country back", kinda-sorta, now what?

A brighter spot under Modi has been the shift in energy policy away from coal (which has huge corruption issues within the Coal India monopoly, and depleting their hard currency reserves with expensive coal imports from Indonesia & Australia) and toward renewables. Under prior regimes the coal-fired generation capacity was over-built, and there isn't even sufficient cooling water resources to run all of them during some seasons, and the environmental damage from coal mining in-country is an ongoing disaster. Any thermal power generation runs up hard against the seasonal cooling water issue (except along the coasts, where sea water can be used), and the grid infrastructure for moving that power around leaves a lot to be desired. Building out wind & solar more local to the urban loads is improving grid reliability & stability but there is still a large over-reliance on diesel gensets for those who need reliable power. But they clearly have a long way to go.

The size of the Indian middle class is now approaching the population of Canada, and voting with their feet to move to Europe or the US & Canada for better opportunities is a standard modus operendus. They are sometimes referred to as "NRI", for "non-returning Indians", in their homeland. It's our gain when their best & brightest show up here with their talent, education, & wealth it's India's loss, and our gain, independent of their religious affiliations. I've known as friends, dated, been co-workers with, and have clients who immigrated from from that part of the world, as well a current client company in Hyderabad. It's quite a talent pool! The third most prevalent language spoken in Canada is now Punjabi (a close cousin of Hindi & Urdu), among immigrants from both Indian and Pakistani side of Punjab.

FWIW: Jayant Bhandari, author of the acting-man blog criticism you linked to is an NRI of Canadian citizenship, living in Muslim-majority (and very modern in most respects) Singapore.

Take some of the published criticism of Modi and the BJP with a grain of salt. Modi's lower-caste status and the fact that he has broken some entrenched chains of corruption give large numbers of Indians other agendas behind hyping the errors of this regime. Like politicians everywhere they over-promised and are under delivering, but that's not to say that the prior regimes were doing it better, or that things would be better under the other large political parties in India. The BJP has many political rivals who get schadenfreude thrills out of every BJP blunder. I'm definitely not fan, and was very concerned when Modi first assumed office. I'm still concerned.
 
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