Day 27. 81 pages, 36,717 words.
One year ago (Saturday), Turku Finland was the unhappy site of a criminal assault, a terrorist attack resulting in the deaths of two women. The following is a public service announcement regarding this tragic event.
Yes, this attack was the work of a rejected and radicalised asylum seeker from Morocco and he was connected to ISIS. It was classified as a terror attack, Finland’s first. He had also previously committed crimes in Germany before coming to Finland. It’s all on the Wikipedia page. I don’t use his name because he is a craven, murderous piece of shit and I absolutely do not care what his name is or what his tale of woe might have been. He is a killer and I’m glad he’s now in prison.
This public service announcement is to salute the actions of the police, who operated admirably and brought the suspect down efficiently and with a minimum of force. It’s an expression of absolute respect for Hassan Zubier, British (by way of Sweden) visitor who sacrificed his health and mobility to save others (he was badly injured, but survived; he has a fundraising site for support). The awards and medals he received from numerous nations are only a small token for the bravery he showed. I simply cannot satisfactorily convey my admiration.
For those of you who are still asking why “the Muslim community” doesn’t stand up against these sorts of attacks, this is also a public service announcement to remind you that Hasan Alazawii was also injured in the attempt to prevent others from coming to harm, and I salute him too, from the bottom of my heart.
“Why? Because I am one of Us. How? Because You are a part of me. Society in a nutshell.”
There was a march “against terrorism” over the weekend (Zubier was there, on the anti-Nazi side). Representatives of the PerusSuomalaiset were baffled as to how a march for such an obviously noble goal could be labelled as a “Nazi march” by others who decided to mourn the event without doing the Nazi salute.
In other news, representatives of PerusSuomalaiset are dangerously brain-damaged lunatics.
This is a public service announcement for the benefit of this intellectually challenged Aryan fuckwit and anyone who thinks she’s even remotely relevant. If your slogan is “papers, please”…
And it was…
…you might just be a fucking Nazi.
May the dead rest in peace. May their loved ones mourn. May the heroes of that day get their rewards and the cowardly murderer continue his punishment. And may everyone else calm the fuck down.
We respect the victims and helpers by working to improve safety, understanding between cultures, and the integration of immigrants every day together with other authorities and the civic society.
The results are measured in many ways, not just by this one incident in the past, which is why we should not give it the status of a symbol or landmark.
– Minne Arve, Mayor of Turku
It’s sad that the Nordic Resistance Movement is using this day to spread fake news, to try to destroy our way of living, our democracy, using this day to dance on the graves of the victims who died. I think it’s despicable. We have to fight them. We have to fight them everywhere. We have to fight the darkness in the world.
– Hassan Zubier
Hatboy's Hatstand 
Pre-wrote this early in the morning, forgot to send it. Pipped it off on my phone during my coffee break.
I’ve never understood the need to drive a wedge between the Muslim and Christian faiths. But it’s been going on for a long time. So I doubt we will solve it here. One of the people killed was a Jehovah’s Witness standing next to a cart of our literature. Not approaching people, just standing watching the cart. A target of opportunity. This makes this one hit a bit closer to home for me. I admit that up front.
My entire issue with this situation is with the police reaction. Why are they applauded for not simply killing this man on sight? There was no question as to his guilt. Nor his intent. He was a murderer, who intended to murder more until he was stopped. Granted there is the whole “let’s not make him a martyr” argument. But now my tax dollars go to continue his arguably comfortable life. Fuck that. He deserved a bullet in the head and to be forgotten.
I wouldn’t have cared if he’d died. However, aside from the “martyr” argument, there’s the “Finland doesn’t have capital punishment” argument. We don’t murder criminals, we lock them up and hopefully rehabilitate them.
And if the day comes when this piece of shit makes it worthwhile for me to care what his name is, it will be an alright day.
Maybe that makes you a better person than me. *shrug*
Well that was already obvious. I’m Australian.
Lolol
(Sorry, resorting to flippancy in the face of a very real and ugly tragedy. There’s just no getting past it.)
Because shooting in the middle of a crowded market square full of panicky people is a bad idea?
But they DID shoot him. In the leg, which is a much more difficult target than the center of his chest.
Which is why I am so respectful of their skill.
Fair point well made.
Driving that wedge supports right-wing politics here in the US, that’s how I’d explain it if I had to. Not sure if that applies in Finland but as far as I can see it does. In America, the most vehement Christians (evangelicals and Baptists and the like) vote right-wing as a block. Therefore this wedge becomes a wedge issue to motivate them to the polls.
Well written, Hatboy. I’d like to suggest that I’ve never seen anyone whinging for the “Christian outcry” when a Christian murders here in the US. Or Brevik, in Norway (was it?). I never hear “where are the Christian leaders on this?!?!?!”
Not that I’d like to. I’m just pointing out…hypocrisy? XD
When the killing (or crime) is religious based or has a religious presence, the outcry is there. Take for example the situation unfolding in Pennsylvania right now.
True. However my point is that every Muslim shooting (or other attack) here in the US is seen as being religious-based or having a religious presence, because it is a Muslim. Not by all of us, but by enough of us. Imagine a world where we did that to every religion who has a murderer in their ranks (which they all do, to be sure).
True (both of you, really). Muslims by definition are their faith in the eyes of the mainstream western media, when that’s not really any more true than it is for Jews, or Christians, or atheists, or Socialists. Those labels come out when it’s convenient, to tell us what sort of gut reaction we should be having.
The overwhelming majority of Muslims I know, with the exception of like one Imam, are at least two or three other things first, Muslim second. That priority isn’t static, but you can bet if one of them murdered somebody it wouldn’t be a gym rat killer, or a fashion designer.
And yes, there are plenty of all of these stripes of people (and every other stripe) who are absolutely defined by that one dominant aspect of their personality. And sadly, religion is one of those things that humans do very often kill over. Or, again, it’s an easy-to-recognise shorthand for a way more complex socio-cultural force that’s making the person kill.
And there’s nothing monkeys like to do less than put effort into thinking about shit.
I think the difference is that most shootings in which a Muslim is involved, ARE carried out for at least a surface deep religous reason. If they weren’t they would just be called shootings. Not Muslim shootings. But the entire premise of jihad being carried out by ISIS, or any other group. Is on surface at least a religious one.
Sad but true. And those groups, ultimately, are led and controlled by people with agendas that really have little to do with faith – or if it is, it is a horriffically bastardised and weaponised variant that cannot, with any real thought, be called a religion.
But yes, that is how they recruit. This murderer in Turku, for example, was a failed asylum seeker. He committed crimes elsewhere and was fertile ground for conversion. I doubt a religious epiphany came with that conversion.
But I’ve already said I don’t care about his tale of woe. My sympathy is all used up on the rejected asylum seekers who are being heroically nagged off planes by well-meaning Swedish demonstrators. You know, the asylum seekers who didn’t actually commit murder, but were just processed back into the Hell they escaped from due to a wide range of other reasons.
Like I said, if those guys were criminals, they’d be in prison like this guy.
No Muslim shooting in America is just called a shooting while you admit some surely are. No Christian shooting in America is decried as one while some definitively are. Instead Christians use the No True Scotsman fallacy to deny the connection with religion.
I can perhaps better see this double standard because I feel no connection to either major religion.
I would be interested to know your examples of Christian religion motivated shootings which weren’t described in the media as such. As well as your examples of shootings in which the perpetrator was a Muslim, and decried as such, while the shooting was clearly not religiously motivated.
I’m sure you would and sad you will not take me at my word. I will not take the time I don’t have to compile what I have observed over years. Nor will I do so because then we will debate how I decided it was or was not the religion. No thanks.
I’ll just leave you with this. I see it every time that when a shooting occurs we ASSUME it is a muslim. And there’s never apologies or redress. Clear bias. Period.
Perhaps it’s easier to say it this way. It’s super easy to see why a lot of people think “Muslim” is a race, because it is always the modifier used.
Examples like school shootings, church shootings (that’s gotta be religious, right?), cinema shootings … we get “mentally disturbed” and plenty of city and social modifiers, and often “black” and sometimes even “white”. Very rarely a non-Muslim faith modifier – unless, like you say, there’s an agenda at work and the killing is clearly religion or cult related.
With Islam it’s practically universal, and I find that intellectually questionable.
I also think your specificity (must be clearly non-religious Muslim murderer, must be clearly religious non-Muslim murderer) is dubious, because it leaves a Hell of a lot of room for interpretation.
It often also takes a bit of digging to find the motives at work in a “Muslim” case, since it’s treated as an open and shut case. Even the nationality is a side-note (“y’know, one o’ them Muslimmy countries”). Whereas with non-Muslim murders, there’s clear motives and background and the faith is treated as an irrelevant detail – which it often is. For all murders.
All of this said, I do agree with BRKN about jihadi terror kills. They’re just such a tiny fraction of actual murders, particularly for the attention they get in politics and the media. Which is another symptom.
Just to clarify:
Once we start digging into motive, we have to be careful. Is it religious just because he yelled “God is great”? Then all murderers who pray or take the Lord’s name in vain must be treated as religious fanatics killing for faith.
Aw, dont be sad. I put my complete faith in only three things in this world. My God, my wife, my momma. In that order. And I dont take a single thing any of them say as fact without empirical proof either. I was raised to ask questions, and to ask for proof. That’s just good practice. The other reason I asked for examples is that I am not exposed to a 24 hour news cycle, by choice, and particularly not an American one. So if that is a thing that’s happening, I’d like to see an example of it.
Also, whose this WE you speak of white man? I was 16 when the towers fell. I was watching it live on TV, and I recall thinking “But we just executed McVeigh” because that and the Unabomber were my frame of reference for terrorism. I was aware the WTC had been bombed previously, but not aware that it was an Islamic fundamentalist group that did it. In my defense, I was 7 the first time. I assumed the Boston bombing was domestic in both nature and motive and I suspect I will belive the same if the next attack until told otherwise. It’s also a facet of the chosen target and method of an attack. When I see a bombing I think agendas and terrorist, I’ll admit that. And due to the nature of today’s terror landscape, the most prevalent and active terror organizations claim to be based in or on Islamic fundamentalism. But if a Jewish synagogue or an abortion clinic gets bombed, I’m gonna assume jackasses in white sheets were involved. However, I have yet to read/hear/see a shooting which I assumed was terror related. I assume those are mental health related, or domestic (read family, not home country) issues related. Although perhaps that’s a function of my generation and having a younger perspective. I was in school when Columbine happened. I graduated high school and went to college at a time when shootings were, sadly, becoming the norm. I gotta tell you though, when this knife attack happened in Turku, I assumed it was a skin head stabbing immigrant women. Cause that’s the sort of thing that had been building up. Situations, methods, targets, and stated intent. That’s what I look for before I make an assumption.
Now, I asked for objectively clear examples. A situation in which an attacker (let’s broaden out from shooter, as we’ve established already that I rarely view them as terror driven at first glance) stated up front, I’m doing this for *blank* reason. A manifesto (Although they are sadly going out style. Not that and criminal is good, but one with a manifesto just feels classier.) a letter, a screamed message in their last moments. If those things involve religon, either Muslim or Christian, then it’s pretty safe to say it was religion oriented. I’m not interested in your opinion. I want FACTS. If a vegan bombs a sausage plant, that’s pretty clearly Non-religious. If the news media only talks about the Muslim bombing the sausage plant, then fair point to you.
Let’s look at a time pre 9/11. The terrorism I’m most familiar with was the KKK, and folks like McVeigh and Kacyzinsky. When the Unabomber was active, wasnt the news cycle full of activist talking heads decrying the resorting to such measures? In the 60’s when the clan was bombing black churches, synagogues, and abortion clinics, I seem to have read an awful lot of examples of Christian faiths of all denominations speaking out against it. When a cause is corrupted in order to bring harm to others, the representatives of a more moderate stance for that cause are expected to speak up. The unfortunate truth is that most terrorist organizations focused on America at the moment are attempting to hide behind a cloak of Islam. And while I personally find it rather easy to separate them from ACTUAL muslims, I can understand how many people instinctively turn to check if that’s who did it.Catholic priests have raped little boys. If a young boy is molested, especially if it’s on the East Coast. I check specifically to see if his priest did it. And I feel no shame for that.
Finally, you seem to be under the impression that I was referring to modern circumstances when k spoke of the wedge between Islam and Christianity. That wedge has been there for a long long time sir. Christianity as we know it took form in the first century during the Roman Empire. Islam began only a bit later in the 7th century. The started fighting each other…..basically the next god damn day. And it has invariably been a “religious” war hiding some mother fuckers greed. This is the thing I dont understand. What is it about humanity that allows us to grip so fervently to “I am right, he has to die.”? Catholics vs. Protestant, Islam vs. Christianity, Judaism vs…… well fucking everybody really.
I apologize if you felt my original comment was a request to learn more about your opinions on modern religious assumptions in the right wing news media. I’ll take the blame for being unclear. I probably should have clarified earlier, but I have ADHD and I got side tracked by your tangent. *shrug*
Here is my clarification. I dont give a flying fuck what religion this man is. He killed someone I knew, if only in passng. Someone who was peacefully minding their business. Fuck his right to breathe air. In situations like this, where guilt is absolute, and there can be no question. Capital punishment gets my vote. I’m not in favor of mob justice. Not calling for anybody to get lynched here. But a state has the right, and I feel they should exercise it. And I dont understand why Finnish police are trained to shoot people in the legs.
Good to know. And no thanks. I’m not interested in proving these assertions to you. Take that as you will. It’s not worth my effort to inform one person who isn’t even living in America, however open or resistant they may be to what I would write. Take that as you will as well, I left both descriptors as possibilities.
If you ever come back here, I highly recommend you go against your tendencies (or religious mandate if that’s what it is) and follow politics. It affects us all, whether we like it or not.
Great comment and clarification.
But the state doesn’t have the right to goddamn murder anybody, my lad.
Pro/Anti capital punishment is a whole separate thread.
Oh there’s no thread. We stopped arguing with savages about head hunting decades ago.
Lolol
Since this fell into my lap it gets the laziness exemption.
Now, see if any major news media blames Christianity for this. These appear from time to time if you are looking, by the way.
One thing though. You mention McVeigh. I’m pretty damn sure he’s an example of a Christian murderer who didn’t have his religion put on blast. Same with Brevik. And there were loonies here recently committing crimes and getting away with them that I think came from their religious beliefs as Christians. Forget the name but it’s a clan. They held federal land illegally for their cattle without paying. Then they occupied a federal building in Oregon. Treated with kids gloves…religion never mentioned in mainstream media.
brkn hopefully you will find this interesting, and Hatboy too of course. I ran across this video about some ex-Muslim activists in the US who were discriminated against by Muslims at a nearby event. At about 9 to 9.5 minutes in you will hear from one of the activists that her own mother asked her “aren’t you worried someone (meaning one of the Muslims) will come up to you and stab you?” Her words. Also her words, that the US Muslim community is one of the most progressive in the world, and there are still people like that in it.
Just food for thought. Around that time-stamp and a bit later, there’s some very honest admission from these ex-Muslims that there is something to worry about from the community.
Now, I would agree if you said a lot of the words used against them would also occur from some Christian communities. Fundamental ones, at least…. But these ex-Muslim voices had things to say that I think most of us on the left don’t really like to hear. Polite, but clear, voices.
Great video, although I’m not sure what it has to do with any of the preceding discussion. Also, now I’ve seen the whole thing, I’d suggest there are other ways of interpreting what happened than that these activists were “discriminated against by Muslims at a nearby event”. I didn’t see any sign of that.
Okay, so what I ended up doing was live-reacting to this video. Not sorry about the length.
00:44 – Why did they want to be a part of the summit if they’re ex-Muslims? Seems like a Muslim thing, so were they there to protest? Collect converts? Confront the ignorant believers? This immediately makes me think that we can’t actually know what the nature of their attendance was. We have their description of what they were doing and how they were behaving, but we know that alt-right dillweeds describe their marches as fucking tea parties as well. Not drawing a comparison of course – just saying that they were evidently there to stir the pot. Ultimately I can respect their dedication, in retrospect after seeing the whole video I think it was a good idea for them to go and open a dialogue. But I’m still not seeing discrimination. Certainly not from the Muslims involved.
02:44 – Seems disingenuous (on first viewing). They may not have been calling it a protest, but they were former members of a group gathered outside a huge meeting of said group, and she was part of that activism. She was a protestor. Starbucks / the hotel / convention centre gets to ask her to leave if her presence looks like causing problems for them. If this shit happened at Ropecon and it was a bunch of ex-cosplayers making dicks of themselves (again, we really don’t know what they were doing and saying but from their attitude it’s obvious they weren’t just being chill and open-minded), they’d be told to leave. Doesn’t matter how chill cosplayers are, if you listen to the alarmists we’re a bunch of perverts.
04:19 – Seems like the shirt was the problem, it was not the “Love is Greatest” shirt she was wearing at the time. The “Support ex-Muslim rights” shirt isn’t exactly inflammatory but like the guy said, there were protests going on and we know these are volatile people. You know. USians. Fucking savages. Progressive my arse. *smri*
05:26 – By this point, the not-at-all-a-protester dude is just being a pain in the arse and you can tell he’s in it to try to generate outrage and push the limits. Fair play to him because he is allowed to push those limits in the land of the free, but the security guy is absolutely right.
06:10 – Random thought. Nobody is more extremist and dangerous than a fundamentalist believer, this is true. But nobody is more obnoxious and strident and self-righteously confrontational and condescending than a former member of a group. Particularly your Oh My God I Just Realised Atheism Is A Thing USian ex-Christian or your Imma Jump On All The Bandwagons USian ex-Muslim.
07:41 – It’s not outrageous at all. She just got through saying it was the biggest event of the US Muslim calendar outside of Ramadan, and that there were 50,000 of them in the area. 50,000! You think security is going to start trying to kick out hijabis or people with religious slogans on their shirts? Really? And do you think they’re going to let a group of obvious shit-stirrers stir shit? Grow up, lady.
07:49 – Oh is that all the shirts were about? That you don’t believe? And you’re … at a huge convention specifically for believers? Yeah, go home. I appreciate that your heart is in the right place but you’ve got to pick your battles and this was just way too ambitious (follow-up on viewing, my instinctive reaction was off-base here, it seems like the Muslims at the convention were way more open-minded than I am. Who knew?). Plus, how many “I’m not a Muslim, debate me” not-at-all protestors need to show up at a huge Muslim gathering in the US before it brings out the Redhats, dude? If I was in security, that’s what I’d be worried about. If you allow one form of protest, you allow others. Including all the actual Islamophobes (of which I’m prepared to grant these are not, despite their clear agenda). And from there, shit will escalate and wind up with nobody looking good. Especially the security guys who let shit slide. Ideally, the security guy should have stepped to them and explained as much – tried to open a dialogue just like they were with the Muslim community. But that’s … really not what security is about.
08:49 – Alright, I’m with her on this one, that’s a shitty thing for them to do and she … yes, alright, she should maybe have considered this but I applaud her bravery in that she probably did consider it, and thought it was worth the risk anyway. She wasn’t in the wrong to take part in the gathering, however much I might disagree with the decision. It seems like she broke no laws and there’s nothing wrong with being non-religious, even if it is a bit obnoxious to push it at a religious gathering. It was the people (other family and friends, staggeringly, since they recognised her) who attacked her family (verbally, I’m assuming) who are in the wrong here. Even if there was a valid grievance, it was with her, not her law-abiding and pious family.
09:07 – Right, shaming. Class act, you pillars of the moral community. Way to high road. But not exactly an unusual part of the religious playbook.
09:14 – If your first reaction is to tell your kid to go to Hell and burn, you are just basically fucked as a human being. I get that those were words spoken in haste and anger, but if you’re a believer, then that shit is real to you. It’s be like me saying my kids should jump under a bus. Because buses are real to me [insert joke about the Vantaalainen and his delusions that buses exist]. So yeah, fuck the people who came at her family and fuck her family too, apparently. Maybe I misunderstood this part (it was super vague and mumbled and I had to replay it like five times), and the mum was telling the haters to go to Hell. That’s more acceptable but still pretty crazy. But no, the girl clearly says that her mother’s first response was to tell “us” to go to Hell, as in the ex-Muslims. Pretty clear.
09:19 – Fair play but this should be your first reaction. Fucking Hell.
09:32 – I get it. That’s a horrible assumption to make, especially from an insider talking about her own community. But a couple of things: 1) This mother’s judgement has already been established as extremely questionable to me. She seems like a fucking twit. 2) Twit though she is, she seems to have more awareness of the shitstorm her daughter was trying to kick up than her daughter did. Not the daughter’s fault, I repeat – but a storm nevertheless. 3) Parents say dumb protective shit about their kids and talk about them dying gruesomely to put the fear into them. Like, everywhere, always. It sucks that this is about Islam and there’s no getting around the problems it highlights … but it’s still not exactly telling.
10:09 – That’s also sad, but mothers being ashamed to be seen in public because of a thing the kids did is also pretty universal.
11:30 – Great point. Really great point.
12:53 – I don’t know if it causes a lot of distress to the average Muslim, but okay. It’s a viewpoint. And still an interesting point. This is a really fascinating cultural phenomenon that we’re getting to watch in real time. I don’t understand why so many people just put on the fear blinders.
13:20 – See, this is why I think the whole thing is a bit over-dramatised. I appreciate the comment here in the interest of fairness, that there were some negative responses but a lot of really positive and engaging ones as well. And nobody actually got stabbed or paralysed, despite what Mrs. Send My Kid To Burn In Hell might have thought. Why is this not the take-away from the video? Am I over-exaggerating the positive in a rose-coloured liberal way? You can tell me.
15:39 – I (obviously, from my comments above) would have gone with that first instinct. But these ladies are clearly braver and more committed than I am. Well done.
15:47 – And again, the positive take-away. It’s not as bad as everyone thinks.
18:30 – Good closing points. Great that this is being driven essentially from within. And it’s absolutely true that the left has some pretty wishy-washy and pointless ideas that aren’t going to get anywhere fast. Whether or not I’m overstating the positive side of this out of a liberal aversion to Islamophobia … don’t know. Don’t actually care all that much.
Ultimately I’m concerned that this video and your apparent thoughts in sharing it (although I won’t speculate as to those) is casting too wide a net, taking a sledgehammer to far too large a demographic. That’s exactly what the real agenda-drivers want – to turn whole communities against whole communities. When what we should be doing is going in with a scalpel. Finding the specific tiny number of actual criminals, the stabbers and the paralysers and the acid-throwers, and the people who are radicalising them and inciting them to violence. And fucking locking them up as the criminally insane and the outright criminals, respectively, that they are.
And the mother in this video anecdote is clearly a product of an earlier generation. That’s the problem here, that’s the generation we should no longer be listening to or allowing to call the shots. We’re inheriting a planetary ecosystem they fucked up, why do we have to inherit their shitty moronic childish ideologies and phobias as well?
Just writing this to say I see your high effort response and appreciate, respect, and agree with much of it. Will respond monday with any clarifications. Since you put a lot if vitriol into their deception of the poor defenseless Starbucks and hotel employees I would say they were right to do that. If you’re at a protest does that give business the right to deny you as a customer especially when you take a break? Are you just SOL? They should be treated as any humans when ordering coffee in otherwise silence.
Difficult call, I pictured it as the Starbucks inside the hotel or convention centre, like there are restaurants and cafes inside the structure. That changes the dynamic they have to consider when they let customers in. See my comment about Ropecon and cosplayers.
It’s a false analogy, of course. Nobody is an “ex” cosplayer. Nobody comes back.
Really great summary, especially clear to me on a second read. While I tend to view this sort of protest (from Muslims, if I may say so to make the point, TO Muslims, is the best way to have a dialogue about that particular religion) in a different light and with a higher favorability than you seem to, I still generally agree with your points. So instead of a point-by-point discussion I’d just like to raise a couple of things you have made me realize and ponder with this reply.
First, don’t you accept that if anyone is to be talking to Muslims about their faith (fill in the religion here), it might be best if it’s former members? Or current members, of course….
Second, I really have to push back more about the whole thing about getting thrown out and the security guard. You do know it was Muslims who complained about that shirt that likely caused it, right? Otherwise it would have been more clear when explained and probably would have happened more quickly and thoroughly than it did. But they didn’t want to say “others complained about your shirt being offensive”. Because that’s sounds lame, because it is. The shirt was only offensive if you’re a snowflake. I mean, surely you can imagine thousands of more offensive shirts. “I’m an ex-Muslim”, oh fucking BURN. The burn!
So, I give a total pass to the intense questioning they all gave that security guard. And he was ALL OVER the place with his reasoning. He did say several times it was the shirt, so I thought it was totally fine to ask if the guy without the shirt could get the fucking coffee, or if she could change the shirt and then get some fucking coffee. The answer, as you saw, was no. Because there were complaints about the ex-Muslim protesters, and they’re labeled now, so that’s that. SOL
And that brings me to my third point (of four, I promise that’s it). Privilege. So, you and I both understand how little privilege Muslims have in the US, but I think there are nuances there you might not immediately realize. Islam is still a religion and, at least from time to time, by institutions if not from bigoted individuals, it ends up getting similar protections to the other religions here in the US. Atheists, ex-Muslim ones as well, are not a religion and get no such protections. Well, except that when it’s convenient we get attacked and called religious, but that’s a side-point. You have seen the studies that in the US no group is more disapproved on the basis of religion than Atheists, right? Not even Muslims. There have been a few studies over the years showing this.
And what I wonder about in this case, is do these US Muslims (ex-Muslims but again to make the point I put it that way) gain some privilege to you because they’re not Muslims anymore? Do you view them as somehow more advantaged in my society? Because I see your sympathies leaning towards the Muslims in this as opposed to the ex-Muslims. I think, if anything, they might now have LESS privilege (based on the above). I would very strongly suggest you shouldn’t group them as any more privileged than Muslims in the US. They still “look like Muslims”, but they don’t even have the religious protections anymore.
And finally, I just have to say that I think yes, this IS the time to protest. I mean, if you even want religiosity to decrease (and I DO), especially the specific practices that these protesters would mention if you “ask me why”. I’d rather this than some confrontational one-to-one harassment about an individual Muslim and their faith, which is kind of the alternative to protesting at a large gathering, right? Yes there are other ways, and they do those too (Sarah does, at least. I’ve not seen these ladies before.). But if we’re talking about where to meet Muslims in public and talk to them about Islam, this is actually probably a more polite way to do it than with a smaller group or an individual. And as I mentioned before, I think this is the “who” we want doing it. Not some smarmy ex-Christian like me.
Cool. And I’ll take the chance to reiterate and stress some points I downplayed, phrased poorly, or missed altogether.
Absolutely. It’s not as if anyone else is going to get anywhere.
Now, whether Silly Mom has the right of it and ex-Muslims are likely to be hated on and scorned, or if the apparent experience they described in the video (to my ears) was closer to the truth and a dialogue was possible … I think it’s pretty obvious I’m leaning in the direction of the latter.
Because if not Muslims or ex-Muslims, who? Nobody, seems like.
Now, “nobody” might ultimately be the safest and most stable approach. But unacceptably slow, even for me. The best way for change is to make fusion happen, and that takes exposure to alternatives. Even within the Muslim faith, there’s huge cultural diversity. It seems like they’re okay with that, from what I’m seeing. Admittedly from a safe civilian perspective where I’m lucky to interact with parts of the peaceful majority.
Hee, alright. I’ll concede, and expand on my initial small side-comment, that the security guy could have handled this way better. He really was all over the place.
I don’t know about the question of whether he was upholding store policy, acting on customer complaints, or taking initiative based on the likelihood of shit going down. It was probably a hodgepodge of all three, and then some. We can but speculate.
All true. They were within their rights, they stayed on the right side of the arrest line, and troublemakers or not, they had a right to service, or at least entrance. Unless the convention centre was closed for a private function, and it didn’t seem to be. Again, speculation.
I reiterate my admiration for the activists taking on a huge, difficult target. I still feel it was an overall positive result, though.
It’s never far from my mind what a fundamentalist shit-show your country is! But in this case it bears acknowledgement and repeating: Yes, these guys get the stick coming and going. They’re Arab-lookin’ brown atheists pushing themselves in people’s faces. Can’t overstate the risk they’re taking, and being stabbed / paralysed needn’t necessarily come into it.
No, I certainly didn’t assume they gained some real-person cred by not being Muslim. That would only work for white Muslims.
No, you’re right (as well as smarmy). I did say, but didn’t say up-front enough, that my initial judgement was out of line. I thought it was a mistake and she should have gone with her first instinct to avoid the event, because that was my first instinct.
Turns out that was wrong, and she was right. And it worked out pretty well. I hope it continues to do so!