Cross winds...(shudder)...

A wild *happy here. I shudder to think how 'murican security meatheads would react compared to this

Right there with ya, lady... /shudder

All but the dud [shudder]

I love how such a narrow clip provokes such wide-ranging discussion here on the Sift. I think the clip itself raises two central questions:
1) Is Islam - in this point in history - more dangerous a religious ideology than the others, and
2) Is such a question/comparison even relevant? Or perhaps "promotes Islamic hatred" as the douchebag facing Maher seems to think?

To 1), I've argued above that yes, it is. as for 2), raised mostly by the commenters here, I would have to say "no, but" to both. Religious (and non-religious) ideologies should be strongly and non-violently denounced whenever/wherever they do harm. In the US, for example, Christianity does way more harm (to women's/gay's/atheist's rights, to education, etc.) than Islam does, but neither excuses/diminishes the evil done by the other. The "but" would be for when people get accused of discrimination and "islamophobia" when calling out the evils of Islam.
The necessity of the second "but" is illustrated by @shinyblurry's comment: there is always the danger of right-wing and/or Christian fundamentalists taking criticism of Islam to be a defense/validation of their own strain of wrong/dangerous BS and/or racisms (to be fair, sb only exhibits the former). This is inevitable, and should not stop people from criticising/denouncing unethical ideologies, nor should it prompt amalgamation of "criticising Islam" with "hating the for'ners/ragheads/Muslims".

Beyond the subject of the video itself, the correlation between poor socio-politico-economico-etc. status and the adherence to extremes, a point well-made by @Babymech, @Yogi and others is an important factor in the higher numbers of "Islamist evil" worldwide, one that I am well aware of. There is no better way of turning whole populations to fundamentalist extremes (or at least worse ones than they had before; let's not fall into the "noble savage" fallacy) than by meddling with their politics and then bombing the hell out of them. The danger is to go to the extreme of excluding the very nature of those fundamentals from the picture, which is just as simplistic and false as is blaming them exclusively.

Moreover, I always shudder at the left-wing strain of argumentation which puts ALL the blame on the Western invaders, (edit: 19-20th c.) colonisation and co. This view relies heavily on the "noble savage" form of racism, which assumes that only "White people/Westerners/Judeo-Christians" can wreak political/social havoc in the lands of those poor, innocent "Brown people/Muslims" (those two often being conflated). Having lived in Africa for 5 years I have a knee-jerk reaction to this kind of self-centered guilt-tripping, which deprives the "Brown/Black people" of one aspect of human nature: the ability to be evil, to fuck themselves up without any help from the "West". They can, and they do.

This tangent may seem irrelevant here, but the reason I bring it up is because that it is this sentiment that is behind much of this "Islamophobe" name-calling in the US and Europe, and behind the difficulty many "Westerners" have in bare-facedly criticising Islam, when they often have no such difficulty with their "home"-religion, Christianity.

@aaronfr raises the problem of how to go about denouncing an unethical set of beliefs, and gives several good examples of how not to (it is noteworthy that the only example of violent action is one taken by other religious people; I have yet to hear of atheists using anything other than words and pictures to make their point). Hitchens’ endorsement of the Iraq war lowered my esteem for him greatly (somewhat saved by the fact that his stance on this was of no influence to anyone, contrary to his huge effort against the evils of religion), but it is noteworthy that he and Harris are the most criticised (and the least influential) when they hold such positions.
On the side of the religious, however, it is often the crazy fundies who are the loudest and, in certain areas (with the aid of socio-etc factors of course) the most influential. And they have, especially in the Quran and the life of M., a reliable and divine source of hate/violence-mongering.

As you say, peace and prosperity are some of the best deterrents to religious extremism and unethical behaviour (but not solely; cf: the US, Saudi Arabia and co.) This does not render unnecessary denouncing the unethical nature of Islam, Christianity, etc. As noted above, the negative effects of religion are still felt in relatively peaceful and prosperous nations today (in France, for example, homophobes of Christian, Muslim and possibly Jewish faiths are causing a significant rise in homophobic violence ever since the gay-marriage hearings).

So long as the distinction between "Islam(/religious ideology)" and "Muslim(/person)" remains clear, we should be free to criticise and denounce the former to our hearts content. (Note how "Islamophobia" shits all over that distinction; one of the many reasons that term should never be uttered unironically).

_{My apologies for the dissertation-length comment}

I needed to watch this after watching the video of the guy with half a face... *shudder*

Thankfully the croc attacked the big elephant & not the little one, might have been a different outcome.

*Shudders & ^upvotes^

I want to see the scene where they torch the whole thing

/shudder

My new diet consists of watching this video every single time I feel like eating something. *shudder*

Yeah, that's what's wrong with this ad.>> ^spoco2:

There is something wrong with getting excited about a large tub of instant coffee though.... shudder

There is something wrong with getting excited about a large tub of instant coffee though.... *shudder*

>> ^zombieater:

>> ^PlayhousePals:
That was awkward. Reminds me of something that happened to me once [shudder] =o/

Aw are you somebody's wolf cub?


Here's the story:


Twas a dark [and drunken] early, EARLY morning following a raucous evening dancing the night away to one of my favorite local bands. After hour parties at my place were the norm and that night was no exception. Following the departure of "the gang" around 4am I discovered, seated at the foot of my bed, a straggler strumming away on my guitar [heavy sigh]. Barely an acquaintance, he insisted on playing for me his latest composition. Let's just say he was no ... um ... Jackson Browne. I was at a loss for words and recall an extremely uncomfortable silence at the end of the song. AWKWARD =o/

>> ^PlayhousePals:

That was awkward. Reminds me of something that happened to me once [shudder] =o/


Aw are you somebody's wolf cub?

That was awkward. Reminds me of something that happened to me once [shudder] =o/

I don't feel the need to defend him, at ALL. I just thought in this case he was making a joke referencing last week's 30 Rock. But he's still terrible.

>> ^VoodooV:

>> ^EMPIRE:
In quantumushroom's defense (shudder), I actually think he was making a reference to last week's 30 Rock episode.

I really wish someone would explain to me why people feel the need to defend QM. He says these hateful, racist, and incorrect things consistently, and gets roasted for it, yet people still jump to his defense all the time.
why?