The moderation of this forum and bigotry towards islam

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M*W: The fact is, I do have Muslim friends and even Indian Muslim friends. I don't dislike Muslims at all. Because I have pointed out what S.A.M. stated herself (that it's appropriate for Muslims to lie...), it does not mean I'm a bigot or a racist. You've got to learn to differentiate between cyber personalities and real human beings. On screen S.A.M. may not even be who she is in real life. I guess this is something none of us will ever know, but everything I've said about S.A.M. was to expose her as a liar, because she is and she admitted it. I don't have a problem with Muslims nor any group of people, but I do have a problem with liars. If you go back and read her 50 gazillion posts, you will understand my point about S.A.M.'s habit of lying.

As I've mentioned previously, thread titles don't mean anything. It's just a way to bring attention to the thread, and it did. I'm just the messenger here. It would seem that you should have more of a problem with a liar than you would with the messenger who exposed the liar. But, then, that's just me.

 

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Then why did you say

I mean, I suppose it is possbile to be friends with people one considers evil, but it's odd, at least without some explanation.

 

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my fuck
i sat and stared at stryder's post and realized what a noob i was

/humbled

 

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OK. We are the ones the messages are to. Who are the messages from?

 

Logic, or maybe, in this case, lack of.

 

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M*W: For the umpteen time, S.A.M. is the one who made the statement that it's okay for Muslims to lie. I just repeated it with my opinion on lying.

The message was to the forum in the format of a new thread. M*W was the one who exposed S.A.M. on the forum. Again, it was S.A.M. who proudly stated that Islam permitted its adherents to lie. She gave extensive examples of what kind of lies to tell, why she believed in telling those lies, and what the outcomes would be from telling the lies. I personally don't know any Muslims who lie. I never have, but after having some Muslim friends go over S.A.M.'s posts, the consensus was that S.A.M. has a major mental disorder and is a sociopath.

 

So what happened?

I would think that a person of your alleged intellectual authority would do some research on a subject instead of just spouting off about it and then wondering why such uneducated drivel causes anyone distress.

To reiterate a point I made earlier in the week:

Look, if said member did a bit of honest research and understood the concept, purpose, and origin of dissimulation, the thread wouldn't read as it does ....

.... Seriously, if someone wants to make a responsible examination and still declare dissimulation wrong and perverse and exceptional among monotheistic assertions, they ought to be welcome to do so even if that leads them to conclude that "Muslims lie". But nobody's about to do that.​

Where in your "Muslims lie" topic have you shown any decent academic consideration of taqiyyah?

As I noted in that topic:

... for all the obscure notions you come up with about Jesus as a sun god or whatever, you seem hard-pressed to actually give a damn about dissimulation as a component of the Islamic outlook.

It does seem strange that, when it comes to complaining about Muslims, you can't be bothered to explore anything more subtle than propagandous bullshit. When I first encountered this topic, I actually thought you were being sarcastic.​

Truly, M*W, I have long thought you more intelligent than that. Is there a correlation between the superficiality of your topic and the fact that it pertains to Islam? Or have I just not been paying enough to your decline of late?

 

OK, you answered this for the umpteenth time.
Can you answer my other question which you keep evading? Why do you have Muslim friends if you think they are all evil?

Can you answer that one once?
Were you lying?
Telling the truth?
Confused?

 

And, of course, you completely misunderstood that thread. You, perhaps, would never lie, no matter what the situation. But most people ESPECIALLY most secular humanists do think it is all right to lie in a variety of contexts. How strange that you do not agree with most members of your group. It is as if you had a commandment: Thou shalt not lie. Frankly, however, it seems you have lied. Either about having Muslim friends or thinking Muslims are evil, along with religious Jews and Christians. You have also it seems lied about your children whom in one post you judge as having rather aweful lives adn then in another saying their lives are abundant. I do not know if you lie, are confused or do not pay any attention to what you say. But it seems to me you lie.

 

But, if she's doing more than just baiting? How about if what she said were boldface lies or she was being intellectually dishonest? Would you be pissed at someone who constantly did that during a discussion?

 

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M*W: Tiassa, I have nothing personal against Muslims nor anyone. My thread, "Muslims lie," was just repeating what S.A.M. had admitted... that Muslims are permitted to lie according to their religion. I was quite shocked by her admission. I have Muslim friends, and I have never known nor suspected any one of them to lie! If this was such a sore subject, S.A.M. should have kept this little factoid to herself... but she didn't. In fact, even since I've been on sciforums, I have not known any other Muslim to lie except S.A.M. which she does repeatedly.

As a writer, Tiassa, you know the value of sensationalism. It attracts a wide variety of emotion, even hatred. If I wanted to be known as a mild-mannered member of this forum who gives kissies and hugs to everybody, well then I would be that person. However, this is a controversial forum that elicits all kinds of strong feelings from its members. I chose to be the personality I portray regardless of my background or education. If I write something that really gets under the skin of someone else, so be it. Nobody would read my posts if I were a bland, mamby-pamby, candy ass. I want to reach in and pull out the strongest feelings I can of the other members. I thought you understood that concept. I want to piss people off as long as they'll read me. If they hate me, that's okay. One has to read what I write before they can hate me, and that elicits the strong emotions that I'm seeking for my time on this forum.

Everything is not always as it seems.

~ M*W

 

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M*W: Please read carefully. I have Muslim friends, because I like them, and the feeling is mutual. I don't consider any one of them to be evil nor do I believe that any of them has ever lied to me or anyone else. Even on this forum, I am not aware of any Muslims (except S.A.M.) lying. S.A.M. has been caught repeatedly in a string of lies. I am only referring to S.A.M. until such time as it becomes apparent that others may be lying. After all, it was S.A.M. who made the statement that it's okay for "Muslims to lie."

I don't know what else to tell you. Even my Muslim friends think S.A.M. is a liar (and some of them are Indian Muslims) which was not meant to be any kind of slur.

 

Your kids must have been popular with their friend's parents when they started school.
Come Christmas and everyone's getting excited, and then your kids pipe up "Santa Claus? Don't be ridiculous, it's your parents!".

 

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M*W: I am not a good liar. In fact, I have a hard time lying. It's better to face facts than to mislead someone else. Children, however, must be communicated with at the level they can understand. Sometimes the whole truth would be misunderstood. I would make a judgment of the age and comprehension of the child. Adults, however, can handle the truth. Take for example, my best friend's husband is having an affair with our neighbor (hypothetically). I know it, the whole neighborhood knows it, and my friend comes to ask me if it is true. Depending on that specific moment, her emotional state, I probably would tell her that I don't know. That's the truth, since I haven't actually seen any assumed contact between the two alleged adulterers. OTOH, if my friend is onto it already and is looking for confirmation, I still don't think I could confirm for her what I haven't seen. What may look to everyone like the truth, may not be the truth. Not everything is what it seems.

On atheism. I am an atheist, but I am not a member of an atheistic group. I can only speak for myself.

Since you don't know me or my children, you are coming from a place of ignorance. I accept whatever religion that two of my kids believe in. The other two have managed to shed the facade of religion. I have a great relationship with my children, grandchildren and now great grandchild. Religion is not a big subject with any of us.

Sometimes I am quick to make a statement that later I realize was confusing, but I don't lie. There's no point in it. That's why I find it so hard to believe that S.A.M. said it was okay for Muslims to lie. I ask, why Muslims?

Don't concern yourself that you think you know all about me. You don't. You never will. You can make all the assumptions you like, but you will never know me. If you get angered by what I write, then don't read my posts if they upset you or put me on ignore so you won't see my posts. Either way, I'm going to post what I believe to be the truth and expose others when they lie. There is no point in lying.

 

Ignorance?
Assumptions?
I asked one question: Did you tell your children it was Santa Claus or not?
If "yes" then you lied.
It's that simple.

 

Give them a rope...

 

Please formulate your arguments correctly: either you know or you don't.

 

Here's what else: Why did you say the following?

Please explain if you believe this, if you were lying, or if you were confused or something else?

 

Since you bring up your children in which of the following statements you made ABOUT your children were you telling the truth.

You also say this referring to theists.

Do you believe this is true in relation to your Christian children? If not, are you lying when you generalize about Christians?

 

For M*W

As a nickel's worth of unsolicited advice, I would suggest that if you occasionally provide a link—you know, like embedded around the phrase "what S.A.M. had admitted", or even bare-naked at the end of the post—that took us to the thread or post in question, it would be helpful to both you and your readers.

The reason being that you keep hammering away on S.A.M., and yet I have no idea what, specifically she said, and am not inclined to go fish in the face of such an ugly outburst. And when you're unwilling to tell us any more than what you say S.A.M. said, I do wonder why. If you're confident in your contextual perceptions, why not help the rest of us by analyzing the actual quote instead of your own summary?

You know this site is rife with bigots and idiots. On the occasion of your "Muslims lie" topic, you did, in fact, manage to sound quite a bit like them.

One thing you can do to alleviate that problem is to point people who don't know what topic or post you're referring to in the general direction. If I have somehow missed that link, then I please forgive me, and I would humbly ask you to indicate it once again.

After all, it's entirely possible that I or someone who isn't part of the standard anti-S.A.M. faction will read the discussion in question and say, "Well then, it would seem S.A.M. really did screw the proverbial pooch on this one."

Sensationalism is a powerful tool appropriate to any number of things. Most commonly, it is for fiction, sermons, editorials, and political exploitation. For more disciplined, academic, or informational writing—including news, research reports, and informational analysis, among other things—sensationalism is considerably less appropriate. For instance, the 24/7 cable news chatter. It would be more informative if they treated journalism seriously. But they're pushing an entertainment angle, as well, in order to play for ratings. Or, perhaps, if you've ever read Family Research Council papers on homosexuality, you might recall that what is offensive about them is not the sensationalism per se, but rather the idea that they're trying to present information as if it was somehow genuine and scientific fact. There are a couple of groups of doctors I've encountered in exploring such political papers that truly annoy the hell out of me. They are ignoring medical and psychological data, using their MDs in a shallow attempt to convince people that their opinions are somehow established fact. Their arguments are anti-arguments; there is no affirmative thesis about it. That's all well and fine if they are editorializing. But when they try to use their authority as doctors to persuade people to believe falsehoods, it is poignantly unnerving.

As you've stated it, your purpose seems particularly egocentric. Perhaps I'm missing something there.

It is, in fact, true that there is a concept of legitimate lying within Islam. It is called taqiyya, or dissimulation. I've encountered discussion of the practice in writings by Muslim, Judeo-Christian, and atheistic authors at least. And while the Muslims often phrase things in a manner that does not resonate with me, one thing seems clear: taqiyya is not what Judeo-Christian and atheistic critics present it to be.

To the other, taqiyya does not especially bother me. There are occasions that people get upset at a religion for stating the obvious about human nature. LaVey's philosophy of Satanism is one of those, for example. When he worked in the circus, he would see all manner of pious hypocrisy. Men visiting prostitutes on Friday, attending the tent sermon fresh-scrubbed and front-and-center with wives and children dressed, pressed, and in tow. Greedy preachers for whom it seemed too much to ask that they even try to practice what they preach. One day, for reasons either practical, cynical, or spiritual—it's kind of hard to tell—he decided to devise a religion that allowed and encouraged people to be themselves. Satanism in and of itself is not particularly sinister; it's just that, like people—especially the redemptive monotheists it responded to—it is insufferably self-centered. All he's really done is strip away the illusions of divine glory that encouraged impossible asceticism. Likewise, taqiyya acknowledges what has long been implicit about Judeo-Christianity. Consider the First Commandment. Most people don't pay attention to the words "before Me". As in, You shall have no other gods before Me. In both Jewish and Christian history, there are long traditions of hiding one's faith in order to protect it. The First Commandment, I've theorized before, is henotheistic. I have also argued before that this implies a certain process similar to taqiyya. In other words, it seems counterintuitive that people should get upset that a religious assertion states something so obvious about human nature. There does not seem to be anything about taqiyya that is not common among humanity. It's hard to see what people are getting upset about, unless their whole point is to look for a problem and seize on their own ignorance in order to attack what they dislike.

In this case, given how good you've been over the years at digging up obscure theories, such as the aforementioned Jesus-as-sun-god notion—

• " The 'Logos' symbolized the 'Word'--the 'Word' was the 'Sun.'"
• "Who was Jesus talking to when he said..."​

—I wonder at what seems to be the complete lack of effort to actually explore the concept of taqiyya itself. Certainly, you're being sensational, and while it seems entirely plausible that this is more about S.A.M. than anything else, I would remind you that in most cases, your theses are more often than not sufficient to piss people off.

That you are resorting to sensationalism only reiterates the nagging question of whether your purpose really is so egocentric. After all, you've certainly pissed off a few people at least with this one, but unlike the M*W that I remember most clearly, you've done it with superficial vice instead of genuinely-intended scholarship.

Perhaps I might by these words compel you to consider seriously what your self-image has to gain were you to put your mind to the task of schooling S.A.M. about the problems you have with her statement(s) about the issue. Not the emotional problem, but the academic problem. Certainly, if the issue is so clearly cut as you describe it, you should easily be able to crucify her on her erroneous representation and corner her such that she must either retract, abandon the discussion dishonorably and pretend it doesn't exist, or actually lie about the issue.

While there are many around this site who would greatly appreciate it if you actually pulled this off, it might be that the problem with this approach is a matter of investment and return. If S.A.M. is the only person you're actually pissing off, would that be enough to satisfy your desire for controversy?