Oh boy… where to even start with this mess… well I guess by the beginning. Buckle up kids because this is going to be long.
Name one country where gay people are accepted at the same level as straights and where no minority is oppressed in any way– no Christian or Jewish country does this either. Blaming disgusting human nature on one religion is absolutely see through, when you’ve done nothing to point out the fact that WORLDWIDE there is no such country.
Alright… first thing first: please, tell me WHERE in the posts above was it said that there somehow exists a magical fairy land that’s blessed with no discrimination whatsoever, I’ll answer it for you: Nowhere. This point was literally not made by anyone, so please take your strawman to someone who might get fooled by it, and if I wasn’t sick and tired of people projecting thoughts in my head I never had and making me say things I didn’t, I wouldn’t even bother; but here I am and I’ll be damned if I let anyone take me back to where I was three years ago.
And really, I find it quite hilarious that you are trying to teach me about what it’s like to be LGBT in the west, me, a woman who is LGBT herself. My last relationship was four years with another woman, and while that fact really should be irrelevant to the points I’m making, I’m not going to sit there and let some idiot pretend that my issues, while real, are somehow equal to those of a gay man (for instance) trying to live in Chechnya (If you can even place that on a map, but I won’t be holding my breath). Because they’re not, and I’d have to be pretty damn self centered and unaware of my privileges to try to claim such a thing.
What, is Christianity’s colonialism, slavery, and genocide not that bad to you? The idea that you have this image of Christianity or any other religion as this peaceful contender and then blaming Islam for random extremism that white Christians commit in America daily and that we’ve witnessed under WASPs with the Holocaust is actually so transparent.
Yet more thoughts being put in my head that I never had.
First of all your american problems are irrelevant to the conversation at hand here, I’m not American and it’s not my job to solve them for you. So take your US-centrism where you put your strawman, because I’m not interested in yet another American trying to make everything about themselves when they weren’t even mentioned once in the post they’ve been answering to.
Secondly, I’m not sure what you believe I think Christianity is like, but anyone who has been following me for a while will laugh their asses off at the implication that I somehow believe that it’s peaceful or I don’t know what other bullshit you were trying to project into me.
What I believe, however, is that if Christianity is mostly harmless in the west nowadays, it’s because it was tamed by the Enlightenment and the secular laws that were born from it. None of that can occur if you don’t let people question and criticise the doctrines they were born under, which is why I think it’s important to let Muslims do the same and to let Islam be opened to scrutiny just as Christianity once was.
What do you know about the fall of the old order in Europe? About the French revolution, the forceful removal of the catholic church from public spheres and of the déchristianisation of France? If your answer to all those questions is “not much” then please, stop wasting my time trying to get smart with me by bringing up historical occurrences you clearly have no understanding of, because I’m not interested.
You’re defending a gay girl because you think a white person is justified in xenophobia and racism just bc they’re queer? Being able to claim one identity does not excuse you from the villainy of oppressing others. If this girl is expressing Islamophobic sentiment and that’s justifiable, then how can you pretend you care about queer rights or homophobia or any other minority issue for that matter? Just say you agree with her islamophobia and be done with it. Because clearly you have no idea what Islam is about and how many Muslims are GAY. That’s right. We’re gay too and you can’t excuse your blatant racism and xenophobia under the safety flag of LGBTQ+ solidarity. Are you serious with this bullshit right now?
Please, point out to me where the xenophobia and racism is. I’m all ears. If I say “Islam, as an idea is not perfect and should be open to be criticized” tell me where the racism is in this sentence and then, maybe I’ll give it to you. I’ll wait but I don’t think you can because ideas don’t have rights, only people do.
And when you’re done explaining it to me, perhaps you can go and make your point to: Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Zineb El Rhazoui, Maajid Nawaz, Amhed Abdel Salam, Maryam Namazie, Waleed Al-Husseini, Yasmine Mohamed… etc.. etc…
I would tell you to go and say it to Raif Badawi as well, but since he’s a bit hard to reach at the moment - seeing as he is currently jailed and flogged in Saudi Arabia for the only crime of blogging about the bad ideas within islam - I’ll give you Ensaf Haidar’s twitter account instead, his wife, now a political refugee in Canada. Go and explain to her that criticisms of islam are inherently bigoted and that as such her husband deserves what’s happening to him, I dare you.
Did you ever bother to listen to those people only just once? Did you ever bother to listen to any of the eastern free thinkers, lgbt or atheists that you believe a 16 years old might be insulting for only just disliking an idea? Have you ever bothered to listen to how they believe their problems can be solved or are you the kind of person who will go and call them native informants for daring to think freely? Because all of those people, fighting for their rights, fighting for their freedom, are screaming at the top of their lungs to let them criticize islam while you do nothing but shut them up because your western ass (sitting in the safety of western secular laws) feels uncomfortable.
In America Mexicans, Arabs, Indians, Muslims, Immigrant, […] Because you have no understanding of humanity whatsoever. “
I’m not even going to bother with this drivel because all I see here is an American going “me, me, me, myself and I” once more. Again take your US-centrism and your insults to someone who might be interested. This isn’t about you, stop trying to make it so.
Defending a white gay for experiencing backlash when they express xenophobia against some minority group does NOT give you an excuse to pat yourself on the back and reward yourself for hating Muslims and exposing your own xenophobia. Millions of Muslims are gay, just like Christians and Jews– one white gay deciding they hate Islam does not represent the entire LGBTQ community, it erases those of us Muslims who are queer, under the banner of some moral superiority and some terrible privileged ignorance.
Again, point out to me where I hated on Muslims, find one sentence where I did that? Similarly, where did I say that Muslim LGBTs don’t exist? I literally made a point of saying that Muslims should be respected, because as people they have rights, when ideas don’t. Criticizing Islam =/= hating on Muslims, stop trying to conflate the two because you cannot see the world in nuances. This sort of strawmaning will only fool morons and children but it won’t fool anyone who has a slight understanding on how the world works or on how eastern LGBT, atheists, free thinkers and reformists are treated in the MENA region. Pretending those issues don’t exist will not make them go away. I’m sorry to break it to you.
A lesbian teenager has every rights to dislike an idea that hates her, she has every rights to hate Catholicism for this reason and has every right to hate Islam if she wishes. Islam is not a person, everyone is free to disagree with it if they so desire without having to withstand death and rape threats and needing to be pulled out of school for their own safety. If you believe they’re wrong, argue with them instead of trying to make them abide to non-existent blasphemy laws and pretend that any scrutiny is bigotry when it’s not.
Are you one of those people who believes Charlie Hebdo deserved to get shot up for making fun of Islam? You are, aren’t you?
You’re white, we get it. And go ahead and erase all the horrible shit that humans across time, especially Christians, have done to the queer community, and pretend that it’s Islam that is at the root of global homophobia. We all know you just want to reward each other for being Islamophobic and contribute to the loss of human life we have to experience, without recognizing your own freaking privilege. If you don’t stand up for other minorities, you’re not a supporter of LGBTQ rights, much less human rights. Get out.
The only person who erases horrible shit that’s happening to people is you, not me. You’re the one who is going around pretending that Islam should be shielded from criticisms, word vomiting about irrelevant shit to the conversation at hand to try to deflect the conversation away from where it has been, constantly inventing points that were never made instead of answering those right in front of your eyes.
God forbid some people might be pointing out that it’s not right that little girls get shot in the face for wanting to go to school, right? God forbid a blogger who was jailed for blasphemy might have his name be spoken out loud once in a blue moon, right? No one wants to reward anything, we want people to accept that Islam is an idea that you are free to believe in or not, and that as such people are free to dislike it as they are free to dislike any other ideas. None of this has anything to do with standing up for minorities or LGBT rights, and please, stop trying to speak of human rights when it’s plain as day that you don’t understand them.
There is no such thing as one islam, no idea is pure once they have left a brain and they are what people make of them, and when they’re used to oppress, kill and discriminate it is important to let people point it out. It’s that simple. None of that is about erasing anything else, because amazingly, human suffering is not a competition and empathy isn’t a pie that one only has a finite amount to give or to take.
“ And the way youre talking about French Muslims in France, as though they didn’t defend France during WWII, as French citizens and historical representatives of the populace in their own right, as though they don’t deserve to be French unless they’re Christian or atheist. French Muslims have been a part of France’s history for over a hundred years, and they have been holding the fort during battles and wars that you nor anyone else can rewrite history to erase. Their achievements and contributions is why France is still standing here today: because of its French Muslim population. How easily white people turn against people of different religions and skin colors is beyond me. “
Again more strawmaning, that’s your thing isn’t it? Literally no one said anything about Muslims place in French history. You’re the only one bringing that up to try to accuse me of … something. I’m not sure of what but definitively something.
Please refrain from talking of French history because it does nothing but make you look completely idiotic and ignorant. As pointed out above it’s pretty clear that you don’t know much about French history, because if you did, you’d know the history behind Laicité, and France’s complicated relationship with religion.
We’re undergoing total genocide in several different countries right NOW, not to mention the several huge genocides under white Christian leadership who have historically erased both Muslims and Jews from their own lands, and you’re out here acting like spreading Islamaphobia is totes harmless and […] And you’re going around acting like Islamaphobia has no consequences on human people whatsoever? What informational gap do you have?
… I’m really becoming quite bored of pointing out the strawman arguments here, I feel like a broken record. Again none of what you just said has ANYTHING to do with the question of whatever or not people should be free to criticize an Idea. And to be honest, I really have no interest in discussing history with someone who thinks that talking of “the whites” actually make sense outside of their US-centric bubble.
No one is saying that bigotry against Muslims doesn’t exist, you’re the only one trying to put those thoughts in my head because you cannot answer my points. So please, take a deep breath and tell me: Am I free to disagree with your idea, yes or no? Does any of that excuses all the atrocities committed in the name of islam, yes or no? Should people living in the MENA be allowed to be critical of the cultures they grew up in, yes or no?
It’s clear that such carelessness and ignorance doesn’t come from some personal dislike of Islam, because that doesn’t require someone from spreading and defending the spread of hate rhetoric and Islamaphobia. If it’s really about differences in religious views, then the one piece of information you’re missing is quite clearly that we’re humans. And somehow the genocide against us people is something insignificant and unimportant to you in your spread of anti-Muslim speech. Like honestly. Just say you want to have the freedom to express that you hate Muslims for their religion and move on. But dont hide under the umbrella of free speech when this type of xenophobia is literally the reason we’re being killed.
No, it’s not what I have been saying. Please stop making me say things I didn’t, it’s exhausting. And yes it has everything to do with my personal dislike of organised religions as institutions and instruments of control, you do not get to decide for me of what I am thinking. Sorry to break it to you.
So like, honestly, just say that you want blasphemy to be a law, and be done with it, just say that you don’t care about all the people being killed, jailed, thrown off buildings and silenced because of such laws in Islamic theocracies and stop wasting my time.
On that, I’ll leave you with one sentence to ponder on: “No idea is beyond scrutiny, no people are beneath dignity - Maajid Nawaz.”