I'm impressed Unlike @newtboy, I don't automatically assume you're lying and feel compelled to do a bit more reading myself before discussing it further.

It's been a long time since I studied it at Uni, and even then we never studied the entire Koran (a one semester course would not have been sufficient for that).

There is, of course, some disagreement about what the hadiths say. The one that immediately springs to mind is "Seek knowledge even as far as China", and I'll quote the former prime minister of Malaysia here:{quote}A hadith says: “Seek knowledge even as far as China.” It was pointed out by detractors that this was just a saying of the Prophet and it was not a command from God. When they disagreed with a particular hadith, they were quick to discredit it and refused to acknowledge it as a source of Islamic teaching. But if they subscribed to it, then they would not cease to highlight it repeatedly, even if it’s authenticity is doubted. Surely seeking knowledge in China does not mean Islamic knowledge. During the Prophet’s period, China was also known to have deep knowledge in such fields as medicine, literature and paper, explosives and many others.{quote}

Certainly the early muslims were very keen on acquiring knowledge, and did indeed travel as far as China to do so (and brought the art of paper making back with them).

Ah, the usual apologistic crap and generalization while crying about generalization.

Sorry if I learned to not make myself much work to prove ignorant and idealistic extremist people like you facts. They get ignored anyway. Theres a simple search you have to do, if you know how to use the Internet. There you will get all the facts.

Facts are facts. If you like them or not. If you dont like them, you should become a politician.

You should have read my second comment. Read the Koran and the Hadithes before you spew out such bullshit. The Bible reads like a story, the Islamic writings read exactly like a manual, how to live Islam, and its a very successful indoctrination method, as you would know if you have ever something to do with Muslims and saw them how they act if they think non-believers dont watch them or hear them. Another thing that is described perfectly in the Hadithes, even with murder: Taqiyya. Not to mention that you cant compare the modern Christian world with the modern Islamic world. If you seriously compare them both (and yet I dont like ANY religion), then you just show how audacious you are to talk about things you have no clue about whatsoever. Stop wasting my time and inform yourself properly instead.

And yeah, not all Muslims are like that. But the vast majority and even the ones you think they wouldnt be that way, suddenly expose themselves as full blown Taqiyya users. Theres a few cases in German media right now, who they thought were well integrated, but they actually are extremely conservative Muslims.
If you knew any Muslims well, you would know you cant trust them, because lying to unbelievers and disrespecting them because of their lack of belief in Islam, is their duty as a good Muslim.
Maybe you will learn the hard way. If you reality denying leftists get your way, you surely will.

Somewhat disappointed that he didn't include my personal favorite argument against Pascal's Wager: conflicting faiths.

Instead of a 4-cell chart (2x2 from believe/don't believe and god exists/doesn't), the chart should arguably be a LOT bigger. Plenty of individual branches of Christianity will tell you that *their* specific brand is the only one that will get you into heaven. And that's just relatively minor distinctions -- different sorts of Protestants, or Protestants vs Catholics, etc. We haven't even got to Christianity vs Judaism vs Islam -- all of which fall under the "Abrahamic" umbrella -- but very few Christian faiths think that Jews or Muslims are just as eligible to enter heaven as they are (or vice-versa). From there you can get to things as disparate as Hindu vs Ancient Egyptian vs Zoroastrianism, and everything else.

With that sort of chart, it is just as easy to say that choosing to believe in the *wrong* god could possibly be associated with a more negative outcome than washing your hands of it and going Atheist. Maybe I chose to believe in Ra the Sun God when Zeus ends up being the one true deity. Come to find that Zeus, as it turns out, tolerates people who don't believe in him as long as they don't believe in one of his competitors (like Ra). Therefore I get a lightning bolt to the keyster and a trip to Hades while my nonbeliever buddy gets a ticket to Elysium.

Of course it's all a load of bollocks, but if your argument is a load of bollocks (like Pascal's wager) you don't get to complain when somebody flips it on its head and uses it to argue the exact opposite...

Wow, you really are a religious nutjob. You support Christian terrorism and you are no better than a Islamic fundamentalist who supports their jihadists.

Also, it's funny that you don't support policies that help the less fortunate. That's pretty much what Jesus teaches in the Bible. So not only are you a terrorist supporter, you are also a bad Christian.

The world will be a better place when you are gone.

I believe that you are correct, and Carr was not actually fined or otherwise legally penalized for his remarks.

However, it *was* a possibility that he would be, according to the first line in the article I linked to in my first post in this thread:
"Jimmy Carr could face sanctions for making a joke about dwarves during an appearance on BBC1’s The One Show."

I believe that I read other news articles that suggested that was a possibility at the time it happened, but I can't find anything with a real quick search now.

Going outside of the scope of that single incident, I definitely have seen quite a few reports of things that I would consider to be fairly trivial incidents like this being looked at by the UK government as "hate speech" and therefore potentially subject to "fines, imprisonment, or both" (according to that wikipedia article).

Samples from a quick search include a politician being arrested for quoting a passage about Islam from a book by Winston Churchill, a young man who was jailed for 12 weeks because of "some offensive Facebook posts making derogatory comments about a missing child" (it doesn't say what the posts were exactly; I am not saying I would defend his posts but I don't think anyone should go to jail for being an idiot and running their mouth on the internet), and another young man who was fined for saying that "all soldiers should die and go to hell". Plenty more incidents beyond those as well, it seems.

So while Jimmy Carr didn't end up actually facing any legal repercussions for his joke, I think it is not far fetched at all to suggest that he might have (and there seems to be some evidence that legal repercussions enacted by the government were being considered in that particular incident).

That is what seems crazy / wrong to me. That is NOT freedom of speech; it is freedom of benign speech, with an increasingly narrow view of what speech is benign.

I'm 100% OK with their being "consequences" for Jimmy Carr for his joke. But the government shouldn't be involved in that (and again, to be fair they DID end up staying out of it in that case). The consequences that I think are fine include:

* Ofcom or the BBC passing on some/all of any fines that the government levels against them on to Carr (ie., IF they get fined for breaking broadcast decency standards, make Carr foot the some or all of the bill for that).

* Ofcom or the BBC electing not to invite Carr to appear on any more programs if they are concerned about preventing fines / protecting their image / whatever. They are a business, they gotta look out for themselves.

* Individual people who were offended by Carr's joke boycotting programs that he appears on, refusing to pay to attend his live performances, etc. Obviously. If you don't like what he has to say, you are are of course not obliged to continue to listen to him.

Anything beyond those consequences is going too far in a society that claims it is democratic and free, in my opinion.

*citation needed

and did you just conflate sanders ideas with ISLAM?
now THAT,my friend,is some seriously impressive mental gymnastics.

you do realize,or at least tacitly aware that america has MANY socialist policies and even institutions?

or have you been so thoroughly indoctrinated into the false belief that capitalism=democracy?

do i REALLY need to remind you that one:socialism.
is an economic system.
and the other:democracy.
is a political system.

that you could actually have a socialist democracy?
oh wait.
doesn't bernie sanders identify as a *gasp* DEMOCRATIC socialist?

come on bob,read a book once in awhile would ya please?
pretty please?

Most of the audience looks like young kids who have yet to really know what life is really about - and it is not Socialism.

The rest of the audience look like left over hippies from Bernie era - still hoping for HOPE and CHANGE. guess they did not find it on Obama.

Bernie's ideas, like ISLAM are not compatible with the Constitution.

With Hillary getting ready for perp walk in her new orange jumpsuit Joe Biden better start getting his crew together.

I think the crux is the sense of right and wrong. A victim in Europe has the authorities on her side, whereas a victim in extremely conservative societies has the authorities against her side. (Not just in Islam - there's a lot of slut-shaming that goes on in super churchy crowds).

I'm not sure of the specific distribution of circumstances either. I haven't heard of any European rapes perpetrated specifically as an attack/punishment for perceived improper/unacceptable dress or social norms.
I think people in the west look at the motivations differently. Not sure if the varying motivations/circumstances make much (if any) difference to the victims - although at least one circumstance is a tad safer (eg. such as, what do you do if someone runs by and rips off your hijab - in one society, you could get raped and sent to jail if someone sees you like that... in the other society, nothing.).

Regarding the video, the guy is telling it how it is... but without any sense of scope. Yeah, these things happened. But, there are millions of immigrants, it's not as if all of them participated. It also omits rape and mistreatment that anti-immigrant natives have done to immigrants (which, likewise, it's not as if all anti-immigrant natives participated).
This is all an exercise in branding. You might as well say that white people are thieves because a white guy robbed a 7-11, or all gun owners are dangerous because a dude shot up a place.

-scheherazade

As psychologist Nicolai Sennels explains, "Mohammed, the prime example for Muslims, married Aisha when she was six and had intercourse with her when she was nine. Besides, according to the Quran (4:24), Muslims are allowed to have sex with female slaves[.]" In addition, "uncovered women are in many Muslim cultures seen as a kind of prostitute, and if a man is aroused by such a female, then – partly due to the corrupted logic of responsibility within Muslim psychology – the female is blamed for being raped (and will therefore often face execution)."

Andrew C. McCarthy, in his book entitled The Grand Jihad, described rape by Muslim immigrants as the "unspoken epidemic of Western Europe." Six years later, it continues to expand and sweep across the continent. Ingrid Carlqvist documents how Sweden is now the rape capital of the West, and when "Michael Hess, a local politician from [the] Sweden Democrat Party, tried to warn his nation that 'it is deeply rooted in Islam's culture to rape and brutalize women who refuse to comply with Islamic teachings' he was charged with 'denigration of ethnic groups'" – a crime in Sweden.

According to Islamic clerics, a woman who fails to wear a headscarf is asking to be raped. Consequently, in the eyes of Muslim men, Western women are seen as "promiscuous, loose, and willing," and since no one in the Islamic community refutes this, they engage in the violence and abuse of power that rape represents. In Australia, Lebanese gangs threaten policemen's wives and girlfriends with rape. In 2006, the mufti of Australia, Sheikh Taj al-Din al Hilali, maintained that "women who do not veil themselves, and allow themselves to be 'uncovered meat,' are at fault if they are raped."

In Rotherham, England, some 1,400 British children as young as 11 were plied with drugs before being passed around and sexually abused by Muslims. As shocking as this was, it is the fifth sex abuse ring led by Muslims

In Nigeria, Boko Haram seized 300 schoolgirls in order to sell them on the open market.

In Pakistan, the police do nothing as Hindu and Christian children as young as 7 years old are gang-raped and sold as prostitutes or slaves to wealthy Muslim families. From 2011 through 2014, approximately 550 Egyptian Coptic Christian girls were abducted and sexually abused by Muslim men.

I could go on and on, but the point is that in Islam, a women is considered to be a subservient and second class person. Men are supreme and women who do not dress appropriately (per Islamic standards) risk things happening to them. This is nothing new, it is part of their culture. Exposing them to women not raised in that culture is going to lead to incidents.

Now, please note that I do not think that we should not accept refugees. But I do think that we should make sure that women are aware of the situation and we should absolutely be enforcing the law in regards to the people breaking it, refugees or not.

I think it's just easier to simplify an argument when it's part of another society. Even George Saliba criticizes western civ by simplifying Copernicus, Galileo, and others into monopolizing crooks; something he warns his own, "morally just" Islamic society against.

Both Neil and George are railing against each other's society whIle acknowledging a truth.

Always good to hear both sides, and one from an actual historian, but honestly, none of this is news. Any time someone says "this" is why this happened, it's safe to call bullshit until you've seen a multitude of angles (deduction). It's like debating the multitude of reasons for the fall of Rome or the start of WWI. Nothing in history truly repeats itself because it's so convoluted there's rarely a single cause for rises and declines. It's just easy to find a historical pattern and then hold onto it as THE pattern of history and exclude things that are contrary.

Mongols have good bbq... Koreans have good bbq... Americans have good bbq... What does it all mean?!?!?!

The problem isn't that they are migrants, the problem is that they are from a culture steeped in Islam. If you follow certain tenets of Islam, women who are not covered properly and/or do not have one or more men with them, are fair game for rape. This is because men are 'not able to control their urges' when exposed to this situation, so it is the women's fault.

Add this to the typically PC uber alles attitude of most of Europe and you are going to get this situation. The government can't afford to single out the refugees because it not only makes them look bad, it makes people reconsider letting in any more. So, as written about in fiction books where followers of Islam migrate to a non-Islamic nation, women will be raped and they will just have to move on without justice. Or what will happen is innocent Muslims will be exposed to the concept of private justice by angry mobs.

Congratulations! Your video, A particular take on what went wrong with Islam, has reached the #1 spot in the current Top 15 New Videos listing. This is a very difficult thing to accomplish but you managed to pull it off. For your contribution you have been awarded 2 Power Points.

This achievement has earned you your "Golden One" Level 18 Badge!

That's in part to do with how during WW2 Europe had the bulk population of Jewish faithed people.

Outside of Europe, the population of Jewish faithed persons was scattered throughout little towns and ghettos (in the social sense, eg. like NY's Chinatown for the Chinese).

There was a small-ish population of Jewish Poles (called the Zionists) that had in the WW1 era moved to Palestine and bought land together to form their own communities.

Basically, the high concentration of Jewish faithed persons in Europe in the WW2 era made it easy to target a large percentage of their overall population.

Judea (Referred to as "Palestine" by the Romans - hence why in modern times Judea was called Palestine) had converted from Judaism to Christianity around 300 ish AD (under the influence of Rome), and then to Islam around 700 ish AD (Under the influence of the Islamic expansions). By WW2, Judaism was an archaic religion in the middle east. Similar to Zoroastrianism, where small pockets still can be found, but its otherwise not represented.

It's not till after WW2 (1948) when Britain carved out the nation of Israel from [at the time British colonial] Palestine, and surviving Jewish Europeans immigrated there from Europe, and subsequently Jewish faithed Arabs/Burburs immigrated there from around the middle east, that there was another major concentration of Jewish faithed persons to be found.

(This is when the Arab vs Israel conflict(s) began. A fun irony is that much of Israel's military in 1948 was German equipment (bf109s, etc), and much of the Arab equipment was British (spitfires, etc).)

(The Nazi government did a lot of killing, tho. The Soviet Union alone lost ~10 million soldiers, ~14-17 million civilians, and ~1-2 million Jewish persons.)

One of the reasons why Israel is so insular in regards to non-Jews, is because their overall population is small enough that they would be bred out of existence in a few generations.

-scheherazade

Correlation is not necessarily causation. A different explanation of what happened.
http://videosift.com/video/An-historians-take-on-what-went-wrong-with-Islam

A particular take on what went wrong with Islam has been added as a related post - related requested by eric3579 on that post.