Hmmm.  Right next to this new thread Alex is running on stories about pedophile priests (Death of a Pope).  No on is calling him a Catholicophobe for bringing these disturbing stories -- reported in the regular media -- to our attention.

No one is accusing him of "cherry-picking" and reporting only the bad.   No doubt there is also much good in the Catholic church, but he rightly believes that bad news must be reported.

As to the suggestion that Islamophobia is a concoction put together by a few right-wingers, you could ponder the frequent outrageous remarks by Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmedinijad: denying the Holocaust, saying Israel should be wiped from the map, making sure the fatwa against Salman Rushdie still stands and so on.

 The fatwa -- death to Rushdie and his translators -- was proclaimed by Ayatollah Khomeini.   This is the fault of right wing organizations?  Just because, like Alex, they report bad news that many people desperately wish was untrue.   But it is not untrue and it needs to be told.

Please tell me why you think it all right for Alex to discuss pedophile priests but not all right to bring to people's attention bad behaviour on the part of Islamic extremists?

EasternOrthodox,

we naked beach apes are an endlessly amusing lot :3  We've got jihadist-supporting organizations.  We've got anti-jihadist-supporting organizations.  We've got world-peace supporting organizations.  We've got anti-world-peace-supporting organizations.  We've got global warming supporting organizations.  We've got anti-global-warming supporting organizations.  And on and on and on...

The global human spring continues...

Yes there is great variety in the world, but that is what Waterfall's topic is about.

I am merely responding to Waterfall's comments.

Your comments seem to suggest you do not want to any hard thinking, or reading in any detail about these very real problems.

Where's Waterfall?  Has she written here in invisible ink?

And yeah, there are so many different tribes on Earth right now, each of them thinking that their worldview is the World (and True and Correct).

I wouldn't be surprised if jihadist organizations were more than happy to encourage this manque word "Islamophobia".

SORRY!  I am getting as bad as Graeme, getting my threads confused.  

It is JRT, not Waterfall.

*giggle*  Get away from your computer as quickly as possible and go for a walk :3

EO ---- the problem is not with pointing out and condemning evil but with condemning entire nations and/or faiths for that evil. If that were OK then Christianity would stand every much as condemned as Islam.

This is an old game.the point, EO, is not whether some moslems (or even many moslems) have done things we disapprove of. We Christians, I am sure, have been known to do things that Moslems have disapproved of. The President Iran may have said distasteful things about the holocaust. But let's not forget it was Christians who carried it out. And the history of centuries of Jewish persecution in Europe features Christians in the lead role.

But even that isn't the point. The point is there is a group (not, as you said, just a few) of wealthy people and organizations who have been deliberately encouraging Islamophobia.

This isn't a new story. It goes back at least a dozen years. One of the leading figures is Dick Cheney's wife.  Another is Daniel Pipes, whose foul website, Campus Watch, is used to spread Islamophobia into the universities. We're speaking of a large number of groups or very influential people, all interonnected, and very, very heavily subsidized by very wealthy interests.

graeme,

Indeed, we live in other people's worlds.  I think that this is also a consequence of letting people be free to act and think as they do.

So instead of trying to ban certain types of worlds, I think what we need to do is seriously educate people in that instrument where anxiety, fear, bigotry, etc come from:  the human mind.  Start it right away, meditation, encouragement of empircal techniques for lovingkindness.

Ii certainly agree. But we are living in a world in which manipulation has become a science. People can be trained to hate, and once trained, can be allowed to accept the use of methods no decent person would have even thought of just a few generations ago.

I was dismayed to read a BBC report on Libya quite recently. It is full of quite deliberately misleading information and use of words to convey a false image.

The UK has certainly been going downhill with Labour Party that produced Blair, and now the BBC, once t he most reliable news service in the world.

Israelis, by the way, have resumed their protests over standards of living in Israel. Netanyahu thought he was rid of that with renews clashes with Gaza. But apparently not.

On a more jolly note, Eid Mubarak!

As-salaamu alaikum

-Omni

Apparently Alex thinks Christianity is just as bad. 

And your point is?

This may just be my interpretation of what Alex writes, and he is certainly welcomed to correct my error but...

I don't believe Alex thinks that "Christianity is bad".  Instead he writes that those who act in deplorable ways while laying claim to the title of "Christian" are bad.  He appears to be trying to make those individuals, particularly those in high office, accountable for their behaviour/action.  There is a huge, and frankly not subtle, difference.

There are deplorable people of all stripes and creeds.  Their actions are their own and should not be used to attack others who happen to share a commonality.

Some <insert whatever label suits your fancy> = Bad

does not translate into

All = Bad

And just because some of "The Some" say they define the label doesn't make it so.

LB

--------------------

On an altar of prejudice we crucify our own, yet the blood of all children is the color of God.

     Don Williams Jr.

No one is accusing Alex of being a Catholicophobe.

Well, but Christianity is just as bad. possibly worse. It was Christians who carried out the holocaust. There4 is no Islamic parallel to that.

I have no coubt there is good within Catholicism. Indeed, my experience has been that Roman Catholics are more active in dealing with social problems than Protestants are. And I don't know any Catholics who deao so cynucally with Isreal than born-again christians do.

The problem is a governing structure that is modeeled on Imperial Rome, and on the emerging European kingdoms. That has made the papacy an office of intrigue and worldly power. There have been Vatican espionage agents, Vatican armies and, into the nineteenth century, a Vatican navy.

Yes Graeme, Christians have done many horrible things.  But I would not accuse you of being a Christian-ophobe just because you brought some of those things up.   They are true, they happened.  No argument.

But some people want to Islam a complete pass.  ​No criticism of any kind is permitted.   That is when I say, give me a break.

Since the beginning of time, rich men have always know you can make money off  fools if you first pay to give them someone to hate.

EO Don't some people want to give Christianity and Judaism and the US and Britain, etc. a clear pass?

But I notice far more criticism of Islam than I do of the others in our popular press.

And the reality is that wealthy people and organizations, many of of them Christian or Judaic,  are funding hatred of Moslems.

I don't know of any such groups of any substance financing anti-Cristian or anti-Judaic campaigns in North America. Do you?

Here in North America we have an interesting dichotomy going on.

When a Christian slaughters dozens of innocent people, we say "Oh but he wasn't a real Christian."

When a Muslim slaughters dozens of innocent people, we say "Those damn Muslims".

I wonder why that is?

The thread is called The Fall of a Pope. It is a play on "The Fall of Man"

From wiki In Christian doctrine, the Fall of Man, or simply the Fall, refers to the transition of the first humans from a state of innocent obedience to God to a state of guilty disobedience to God. 

That is not true. For one I am not attacking the Catholic Church. I am discussing as it happens the decline of it's government. I am reporting about how Catholics are demanding change from their leadership. No where have I attacked the Catholic Church or it's religion. It is analogous to reporting on a scandal in any government and discussing it's implications. I have hundred of posts in that thread showing the good cetain lay Catholics, as well as Priests, and Bishops are doing to stop the cover up.

For one I am having a discussion, on the cover up and it's political implications, and the decline of the authority of the hierarchy. meanwhile the Islamophobes are attacking a whole religion and mostly ignore the religious leaders like those who attack Rusdie.  They warn us against the increasing strength of Islam, not it's decline.  The phobes are speaking against things like   building mosques. I am not against catholics or people building Churches.  I went to Catholic High Schools, and attend a Catholic University. Most of my friends are catholics. Many of whom were abused by Priests as children. They like many many Catholic lay people, theologians and social justice groups share my views. There are not many muslims who share the Islamphobes views. Many Muslims agree that things like fatahs are wrong see http://www.finalfatwa.com/. However they are not speaking against Muslim immigration or the building of mosques. Nor do the single out violence done in the name of Islam, while ignore violence done in the name of Christ.  

Those attacking Islam know no Muslims, and are using Islam as a diversion away from the evil they do. Franklin Graham for example who is speaking against allowing mosques to be built in the USA, has said ironically they should not be allowed too because they only build mosques in order to convert people.

The suggestion that my posts can be considered anti-catholics, and never shows the good, even while having hundreds of them that raise up catholic lay people,. Priests, and Bishops who speak against the cover up, only shows that you either do not read them, or that you read into them your own anti-catholic biases .Islamaphobes are speaking against the most diverse religion in the world, and are trying to stop the building of mosques and immigration of Muslims.

I really must ask for an apology for even the suggestion that I am doing anything similar to Islamaphobes

Alex's point seems to me quite reasonable. He is not attacking the Catholic faith. He is attacking, with reason, its leadership.

Contrast that with Stephen Harper who made an embarrassingly silly statement  about something he called "Islamicism". I don't know whether I'm more embarrassed because of this bigotry or because of his Bushian understanding of the English language