| Topic: |
Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"" |
| Date: |
09 Mar 2006 11:59:31 AM |
| Object: |
'Rabs & Muslies: Watch Out - America Has Had It With You! |
Tolerance has its limits. Arab-Muslim assholities about those
ridiculous cartoons depicting the "prophet" have greatly depressed U.S.
citizens' opinion of the culture and religion of the Arab-Islamic
world.
Granted, Muhammadanism is a laughable religion, born and bred and
sustained on hatred and intolerance and the gullibility of its
"followers." But Muslims' willingness to kill and kill thousands of
its its own adherents -- for any slight reason -- has made the world's
most open-minded observers vomit.
WARNING: Clean up your act NOW Iran, Iraq, Egypt, Syria, Algeria,
Libya, Sudan, Somalia, Malaysia, Indonesia, 'frican countries -- and
you other *****-for-brains Islamic-oriented nations -- or face certain
hell!
=3D=3D=3D
"Negative Perception Of Islam Increasing"
Poll Numbers in U.S. Higher Than in 2001
By Claudia Deane and Darryl Fears
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, March 9, 2006; A01
As the war in Iraq grinds into its fourth year, a growing proportion of
Americans are expressing unfavorable views of Islam, and a majority now
say that Muslims are disproportionately prone to violence, according to
a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.
The poll found that nearly half of Americans -- 46 percent -- have a
negative view of Islam, seven percentage points higher than in the
tense months after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade
Center and the Pentagon, when Muslims were often targeted for violence.
The survey comes at a time of increasing tension; the wars in
Afghanistan and Iraq show little sign of ending, and members of
Congress are seeking to block the Bush administration's attempt to hire
an Arab company to manage operations at six of the nation's ports.
Also, Americans are reading news of deadly protests by Muslims over
Danish cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad.
Conservative and liberal experts said Americans' attitudes about Islam
are fueled in part by political statements and media reports that focus
almost solely on the actions of Muslim extremists.
According to the poll, the proportion of Americans who believe that
Islam helps to stoke violence against non-Muslims has more than doubled
since the attacks, from 14 percent in January 2002 to 33 percent today.
The survey also found that one in three Americans have heard prejudiced
comments about Muslims lately. In a separate question, slightly more
(43 percent) reported having heard negative remarks about Arabs. One in
four Americans admitted to harboring prejudice toward Muslims, the same
proportion that expressed some personal bias against Arabs.
Though the two groups are often linked in popular discourse, most of
the world's Muslims are not of Arab descent. For example, the country
with the largest Muslim population is Indonesia.
As a school bus driver in Chicago, Gary McCord, 65, dealt with many
children of Arab descent. "Some of the best families I've ever had were
some of my Muslim families," he said in a follow-up interview. "They
were so nice to me." He now works for a Palestinian Christian family,
whose members he says are "really marvelous."
But his good feelings do not extend to Islam. "I don't mean to sound
harsh or anything, but I don't like what the Muslim people believe in,
according to the Koran. Because I think they preach hate," he said.
As for the controversial cartoons of Muhammad, he said Arabs seem
hypersensitive about religion. "I think it's been blown out of
proportion," he said.
Frederick Cole, a welder in Roosevelt, Utah, acknowledged: "As far as
being prejudiced against them, I'd have to say maybe a little bit. If I
were to go through an airport and I saw one out of the corner of my
eye, I'd say, 'I wonder what he's thinking.' " Still, Cole, 30, said,
"I don't think the religion is based on just wanting to terrorize
people."
A total of 1,000 randomly selected Americans were interviewed March 2-5
for this Post-ABC News poll. The margin of sampling error for the
overall results is plus or minus three percentage points.
Americans who said they understood Islam were more likely to see the
religion overall as peaceful and respectful. But they were no less
likely to say it harbors harmful extremists, and they were also no less
likely to have prejudiced feelings against Muslims.
In Gadsden, Ala., Ron Hardy, an auto parts supplier, said Arabs own a
lot of stores in his area and "they're okay." But, Hardy, 41, said "I
do think" Islam has been "hijacked by some militant-like guys."
Edward Rios, 31, an engineer in McHenry, Ill., said he feels that Islam
"is as good a religion as any other" yet vengeance seems to be "built
into their own set of beliefs: If someone attacks our people, it is
your duty to defend them. . . . I don't think Christianity has anything
like that."
James J. Zogby, president of the Washington-based Arab American
Institute, said he is not surprised by the poll's results. Politicians,
authors and media commentators have demonized the Arab world since
2001, he said.
"The intensity has not abated and remains a vein that's very near the
surface, ready to be tapped at any moment," Zogby said. "Members of
Congress have been exploiting this over the ports issue. Radio
commentators have been talking about it nonstop."
Juan Cole, a professor of modern Middle Eastern and South Asian history
at the University of Michigan, agreed, saying Americans "have been
given the message to respond this way by the American political elite,
mass media and by select special interests."
Cole said he was shocked when a radio talk show host asked him if
Islamic extremists would set off a nuclear bomb in the United States in
the next six months. "It was ridiculous. I think anti-Arab racism and
profiling has become respectable," he said.
Ronald Stockton, a professor of political science at the University of
Michigan at Dearborn who helped conduct a study of Arabs in the Detroit
area and on views of them held by non-Arabs, said an exceptionally high
percentage of non-Muslims feels the media depicts Arabs unfairly, yet
still holds negative opinions.
"You're getting a constant drumbeat of negative information about
Islam," he said.
Michael Franc, vice president of government relations for the
conservative Heritage Foundation, said that the survey responses "seems
to me to be a real backlash against Islam" and that congressional
leaders do not help the problem by sometimes using language that links
all Muslims with extremists.
Polling director Richard Morin contributed to this report.
=A9 2006 The Washington Post Company
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/08/AR200603080=
2221.html
.
|
|
| User: "Mustafa Ibn al-Asslifter" |
|
| Title: Re: 'Rabs & Muslies: Watch Out - America Has Had It With You! |
09 Mar 2006 12:25:26 PM |
|
|
<jismquiff@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1141927171.184613.193690@v46g2000cwv.googlegroups.com...
Tolerance has its limits. Arab-Muslim assholities about those
ridiculous cartoons depicting the "prophet" have greatly depressed U.S.
citizens' opinion of the culture and religion of the Arab-Islamic world.
Same for the other side of the pond. Big Hermano is watching you, Seņor
Asslifter ---
_______________________________________________________
Muslims in Spain Under Cloud of Suspicion
By DANIEL WOOLLS
Associated Press Writer
March 9, 2006, 7:48 AM EST
MADRID, Spain -- At Mussa Bachiri's butcher shop, the customers used to
include a man now jailed on suspicion of playing a role in the Madrid terror
bombings two years ago this week.
The alleged bomber was just a casual acquaintance who ran a cell-phone store
down the street. Still, Bachiri wonders if he is not somehow tainted by
association -- simply for sharing the man's Moroccan roots and Islamic
faith.
"My Spanish neighbors look at me the way they always did," Bachiri said,
pausing on an afternoon of chopping beef and slicing liver in Lavapies, an
immigrant-rich district of Spain's capital. "But deep down inside, who
knows?"
Two years after the bombings that killed 191 people and wounded more than
1,500, human rights groups and Muslims themselves say with relief that there
has been no significant backlash against Spain's estimated million-strong
Muslim community.
But Muslims feel targeted in subtler ways -- a rise in job application
rejections, trouble finding housing, grumbling from neighbors when they want
to set up a mosque.
"This is not something you can measure. But people live it. They notice it,"
said Begonia Sanchez, spokeswoman for immigrant aid group SOS Racism. "They
notice it when they get on the bus. They notice it when they seek work. They
notice it when they run into neighbors in the stairwell."
Islamic militants claimed responsibility for Spain's worst terrorist attack,
saying they acted on behalf of al-Qaida to avenge the presence of Spanish
troops in Iraq.
Most of the 24 people in jail on suspicion of taking part in the March 11,
2004, bombings are Moroccans, many of them longtime residents who owned
businesses, received grants for university studies and otherwise blended
into or benefited from Spanish society.
Human rights groups and Muslim leaders say Spaniards harbor negative
stereotypes of Moroccans -- the pejorative term for them is 'moros,' or
Moors, an allusion to the 700-year Moorish occupation of Spain -- and the
Madrid attacks served as an excuse for more flagrant discrimination.
Bachiri said that when Moroccans -- Spain's largest immigrant group and the
main component of the Muslim community -- call up a landlord to ask about a
rental, there comes an inevitable query about nationality. "When you say
Moroccan, they say 'OK, we'll call you back,'" he said.
Kamal Rahmouni, president of a Moroccan immigrant aid group called ATIME,
recalls that a female colleague who wears an Islamic headscarf was spat on
in the subway following the attacks. He remembers making a point not to
speak Arabic on the street and telling colleagues to do the same.
"There was a sense that the country, or society, was betrayed by a few
people who had been trusted," he said.
After the bombings, however, the Socialist government did several things
that helped calm Spaniards and avert a violent backlash against Muslims,
said Jesus Nunez Villaverde, an expert on the Islamic world and director of
a Madrid think tank, the Institute of Studies on Conflict and Humanitarian
Action.
Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero unveiled an international
campaign, now taken up by the United Nations, to encourage dialogue between
Western and Islamic nations, Nunez Villaverde said. The government also
hired more police officers specializing in Islamic extremism rather than
launch a broad crackdown on immigrants.
In addition, Muslims in Spain quickly condemned the attacks, said Mansur
Escudero, a Spanish Muslim leader.
On the first anniversary of the attacks, Escudero went so far as to sign
what is considered the first fatwa, or religious edict, against al-Qaida
leader Osama bin Laden. It declared bin Laden an apostate for defending
terrorism as legitimate and urged Muslims around the world to denounce him.
That earned Escudero swift condemnation as an infidel on a Web site
associated with Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, al-Qaida's leader in Iraq, and a flood
of e-mails Escudero interpreted as death threats.
But Nunez Villaverde said it remains to be seen how Spain will handle its
Muslim population in years to come because immigration is still a new
phenomenon here. It's only been a generation or so that Spain's been wealthy
enough to lure immigrants rather than send off emigrants as it did in the
lean decades after its 1936-39 civil war.
He said Spaniards are only now getting used to seeing blacks, Asians and
North Africans in significant numbers. The Muslims here tend to be
first-generation arrivals -- unlike second- and third-generation citizens in
France -- who are not yet in a position to assert themselves socially or
politically.
Down the road, how Spain treats its Muslims and other immigrants -- and how
the latter react -- is anybody's guess. "We have no guarantee that just
because nothing has happened so far it is not going to happen tomorrow,"
Nunez Villaverde said.
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/world/wire/sns-ap-spain-worried-muslims,0,937554.story?coll=sns-ap-world-headlines
.
|
|
|
|
| User: "kathryn" |
|
| Title: Re: 'Rabs & Muslies: Watch Out - America Has Had It With You! |
09 Mar 2006 12:09:24 PM |
|
|
<jismquiff@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1141927171.184613.193690@v46g2000cwv.googlegroups.com...
Tolerance has its limits. Arab-Muslim assholities about those
ridiculous cartoons depicting the "prophet" have greatly depressed U.S.
citizens' opinion of the culture and religion of the Arab-Islamic
world.
There are so many fundamentalist muslims lurking on alt.atheism
.
|
|
|
|
| User: "thereactionary" |
|
| Title: Re: 'Rabs & Muslies: Watch Out - America Has Had It With You! |
09 Mar 2006 02:27:38 PM |
|
|
"James J. Zogby, president of the Washington-based Arab American
Institute, said he is not surprised by the poll's results. Politicians,
authors and media commentators have demonized the Arab world since
2001, he said. "
Zogby is another bigot who hates non Muslims. He talks about
politicians and the media demonizing Muslims, but does he forget the
slaughter of 400 school children in Beslan, the trains blown up in
Spain, the night club blown up in Bali, the subway attacks in Britian,
the subway attacks in Russia, the genocide by Muslims on southern and
western Sudanese, the murder of Theo Van Gough, the daily murder of
Muslims by other Muslims in Iraq, the quest to wipe Israel off the map,
the murder of Christians by Muslims in southern Indonesia, the Muslim
riots in France, the murder of Muslims by Muslims over a cartoon. The
problem isn't the perception Zogby, it's the reality.
.
|
|
|
|
| User: "Rune B" |
|
| Title: Re: 'Rabs & Muslies: Watch Out - America Has Had It With You! |
09 Mar 2006 12:05:41 PM |
|
|
On 9 Mar 2006 09:59:31 -0800, wrote:
"Negative Perception Of Islam Increasing"
Poll Numbers in U.S. Higher Than in 2001
By Claudia Deane and Darryl Fears
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, March 9, 2006; A01
As the war in Iraq grinds into its fourth year, a growing proportion of
Americans are expressing unfavorable views of Islam, and a majority now
say that Muslims are disproportionately prone to violence, according to
a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.
In my mind this proves that the wide majority of americans did not
blame ALL muslims and arabs for what happened 9/11. The negative
perceptions of islam are WELL DESERVED. Unfortunately not many of them
are willing to take this to heart and modernize their religion
accordingly.
--
WWJD! What Would Jack (Bauer) Do?
.
|
|
|
|
|
Related Articles |
|
|
