Oh the irony

Organized religion is dangerous and many "moderate" Muslims support the actions of extremists (a LOT of "regular" Muslims worldwide are perfectly fine with the senseless massacre of the Charlie Hebdo folks.) None of it has anything to do with Hitler. Discussing touchy subjects with ridiculous nonsense is not a good idea.

what? I disagree with your statement completely but that's not the place to discuss it. Will comment on the second part though. I consider my family, friends and other muslim colleagues that I know as "regular" muslims whatever that means and each one of us was disgusted by the attacks. Peaceful protests and boycotts are the recommended routes in such a situation, not a massacre which is what happened in this case. Violence doesn't change anything at all. So next time, please refrain from making such blanket statements if possible.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/11434695/Over-a-quarter-of-British-Muslims-have-sympathy-for-the-Charlie-Hebdo-terrorists.-That-is-far-too-many.html

There's a problem, even though the outright racism is fucking disgusting. You say violence doesn't change anything at all. Say that to all those western Muslims who don't think killing caricaturists is a big deal. As for those who, like us, condemn senseless violence, cheers. But the numbers are a bit surprising.

These 25% of UK muslims are considered to be "moderates" who are fully functional members of society but who support this kind of violence tacitly.

The statistic you cite refers to the question
"I have some sympathy for the motives behind the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris”, of which 25% said yes. There is a fine difference between having some sympathy for the motives and having sympathy for the methodsJust like I can have sympathy for Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank without supporting terrorist actions.

Go out and meet some fucking Muslims before you decide to say that a fourth of them support terrorism.

I know plenty and literally every single Muslim I know is a great person, especially the family of my cousin's wife who are all amazing people. But this is why we can't have nice things, I cite an article which shows us that there is cause for concern, and there are plenty like this.

I said "there is a problem", I showed one example of this, 27% of UK Muslims (not all Muslims) have some sympathy for the terrorists who have massacred cartoonists at Charlie Hebdo. If you read further down, only 68% of Muslims in the UK said that "acts of violence against those who published such images [of the prophet Mohammed] could never be justified", meaning that 32% think otherwise.

There are other stats, namely that literally 100% of Muslims in the UK are against gay marriage, which is not just a religious thing because the numbers in other countries such as France are not NEARLY that dramatic.

I think it's fair to say that there is A PROBLEM (not that "a fourth of them support terrorism"). There is a problem because, for one, radicalization is a problem that the West is currently facing, and it is a problem to me because culturally speaking I disagree with some of their beliefs, not unlike how I disagree with the beliefs of republicans (and I consider some of their practices to be "a problem" too.

These are social and political issues that can't even be discussed even in this setting, where I believe that I'm using reasonable words to describe my perception of a political problem, but the prevalence of racism is so high that whenever I raise concerns, people instantly think I'm a bigot.

For the longest time, in fact until the Charlie Hebdo events, I was just like you. Criticism of Islam in my eye couldn't be anything more than racism, the extremists were an irrelevant minority, there was no real problem. But the Charlie Hebdo events struck me because while it seems to me like the vast majority of Muslims in the West are perfectly great members of our society, the number of moderates who tacitly support and thus legitimize the actions of the extremist minority is not negligible. All over the world, there were muslim riots, burning of churches, some murders of Christians. And in the west, we saw that some Muslims agreed with those overseas who rioted against Charlie Hebdo, even though most of their staff had just been murdered.

Here in small time canadian province, Quebec, literally dozens of kids tried (and some succeeded) in going to Syria to fight for ISIS, partially due to floating radicalization circles.

So why can't we talk about this? Is the mere suggestion that there are more "moderates" who passively support terrorism so outlandish that I magically am an asshole for suggesting it? And is it WRONG for me to say that it is a social problem, to me, that many women are forced to wear certain garments by their husbands (which is no simple problem)?

I think that your reaction is very unreasonable.

Edit: By the way, I mischaracterized the article in my previous post, it's not true that a quarter of Muslims are fine with the terrorist attack against Charlie Hebdo, but I don't see how 27% of muslims having "some sympathy" for terrorists is not a concern to you. Furthermore, you acted as if the idea that 25% of Muslims (suggesting all of them) being fine with terrorism was outlandish. Did you see the protests worldwide after the massacres? Did you hear about the riots? All of those people, their reaction to the massacre was just that. Charlie Hebdo's people got massacred. Fuck Charlie Hebdo. Let's burn churches. Literally hundreds of thousands of them in the streets of various countries. Iran, Pakistan, Niger... All pissed at the people who died for drawing stuff. Is it that outlandish that some of those deeply ingrained religious values would still exist, with burning hot passion, in the hearts of Western Muslims? Is the question so fucking preposterous that it cannot be discussed?

And for what it's worth I'm fiercely pro-Palestine. I recognize that it's all too easy to just outright label me as an idiot though, so I guess further trying to defend myself is useless when some debates just cannot take place without people flipping the fuck out.

This is painful to me because I think of myself as a guy who's not particularly smart but who tries his god damn hardest to be intellectually honest. I sometimes makes mistakes, I apologize for them. I admitted to having mischaracterized some stats just in this post. But the reason why this is so fucking annoying to me is because there are these topics which simply cannot be brought up. This is one of them. It's so fucking annoying. I'll argue about everything, I will. I'll sit on the US politics thread and defend black people, I've spent countless hours shitting on the mass media's coverage of the "baltimore riots" as they called them. I've fought tooth and nail for gay rights, I've debated with people on tens of topics. But this is one where any criticism is instantly called racism by simple fucking people with simple fucking minds. How the fuck do they do it, I don't know, it's fucking maddening. When I link you an article like this with concerning statistics about the beliefs of Muslims, even though we know full well they're not terrorists, your reaction shouldn't be to tell me to "go talk to Muslims" as if that would somehow give me a representative understanding of anything. The proper answer to 24% of UK Muslims disagreeing with the statement "violence against those who publish images of the Prophet Muhammad can "never be justified"" is not "go talk to Muslims". It's that at the very least might be kind of a cause for concern, and if you refuse to be concerned by the case of the UK, accept that this 24% figure seems incredibly high to people like myself who couldn't fucking believe it.

Edit2: Sorry for the language and whatnot. Emotion got the better of me. I really don't think I'm unreasonable, and to just act like there's no discussion to be had, IMO, would be unfortunate.

I'm sure many in the muslim community in the west and other countries abroad feel targeted and that the situation is only getting worse. Then, add on the fact that you have hateful pictures drawn of our prophet Mohammed (pbuh) and you can kinda see why things go wild after.

As I said in my previous posts though, I and many others don't support such actions. I personally can't explain why people can't restrain their emotions after such obviously baitful drawings and use peaceful protests and boycotts to get across the point that this stuff is wrong. I think it goes back the idea of upbringing. It would be impossible to explain every single muslims action. Infact, it would be ridiculous for me to even try to do it. Everyone has their own upbringing with more or less emphasis on different aspects of faith (or none for some people) and there's a ton of muslims around the world (1.5+ billion).

Then you also have to explore the concept of freedom. People argue that freedom means you can do anything you want but that's not really true. Freedom to do anything also has its limit and those cartoons and many others certainly surpass that limit imo. Also, why is it surprising that hundreds of thousands of people are protesting against the drawings? In all honesty, I don't remember seeing those happening much around the time the massacre took place, only before but it goes back to my original point, that some feel that the cartoons and other acts have been targeting the muslim community for a long time now.

Please calm down, not sure why you are getting riled up in your post. As for ISIS, fuck them. It always pains me when some people lump ISIS with muslims especially when anyone whose has been following the news will realize that ISIS is not differentiating with who they kill, aka, they are killing both muslims, christians and other people indiscriminately. In other words, they are a plague on the earth and anyone who joins them deserves only death for trying to target other fellow humans beings.

As for this: And is it WRONG for me to say that it is a social problem, to me, that many women are forced to wear certain garments by their husbands (which is no simple problem)? My family, mom and dad's side, everyone chooses when to wear the head garment or not (hijab only). To be more clear, religion dictates that a women should wear it, however, the family shouldn't be forcing them to wear it. They'll have to make that decision themselves sooner or later. If they decide not to do so and I know family members who don't, the family can't force them to reconsider (or shouldn't at least since its not their decision to make). Also, while we are on that subject, just to clear any misunderstandings (incase), other garments like the niqab etc... are NOT muslim garments. I see people mix these up all the time and it irritates me to no end. I dunno how many questions I answered but hope I managed to clarify some things.

I don't believe that those cartoons surpass "freedom" or whatever that means. I can make caricatures of Jesus and all that and it's never a problem. I'm a firm believer that we can make jokes about anything.

ISIS is not lumped with Muslims but it's definitely an expression of Islamic extremism. To act as if they were disconnected is not reasonable. Few Muslims have anything to do with ISIS and obviously a vast majority of them hate ISIS, but in the west there are these groups that do exist, and do "recruit" for ISIS. I think 5-6 teenagers (around 15-16 years), some of them girls, managed to make it to Syria's ISIS controlled areas. I hate to even think about what they'll do to those kids, if they're even still alive.

I don't understand the difference between "Muslim garments" and otherwise, all I know is that there are many men who "force" their wife and female children to wear certain clothes, namely clothes which hide the hair and the face of their women in certain cases. While it can be argued that many women make those choices by themselves, there are many, myself included, who feel like there is peer pressure. I think it's a problem, especially in those cases where the man is directly forbidding his wife to show her hair or worse, her face, in public. It's not all fun and rainbows just because some women willfully wear it after being arguably raised in a culture which promotes this kind of submissive behavior out of women.

And just to be clear, literally everything I say applies to fractions of varying sizes of the Muslim population, and I consider the problems I bring up to be of various importance. My opinion of some of those clothing as symbols of women being oppressed is a problem which cannot be adequately solved (forcing women not to wear it would be oppressive also). But certain other things and practices by certain portions of the muslim population strike me as completely out of phrase with my sense of morality. Anyway I'm off to sleep, cheers.

We will have to agree to disagree on the first point. I think those cartoons crossed the line of what was appropriate. I personally believe that you should not be making cartoons that mock people's faiths, beliefs etc... and I'm sure that I'm not the only one that shares that opinion.

No, it's not related. I'm a Shia muslim and if you have followed the news of ISIS, you'll realize that they want to exterminate Shia muslims. They consider us infidels so we're at the top of their extermination list so what you wrote makes no sense. In other words, its not Shia extremism at all. It's just a stupid group of people trying to use islam as a scapegoat for their immoral actions. If you think otherwise especially with the crap that they do like burning people alive or throwing people off buildings, I have nothing else to say. I sincerely hope that they can catch all those responsible for this stupid recruitment behaviour and put them in jail for life.

The only muslim garment that women should wear is the hijab. The other garment such as the niqab and others are not muslim garments. The niqab and other variations of it cover the face while the hijab covers mostly the hair, ears and a bit of the chin. Islam only asks that women cover their hair and certain length of clothing so none of the niqab or w/e the other variations are called. Can't say much aside from the fact that there is no peer pressure in my family's case since my family understands its a choice that the women needs to make. I think we'll just have to agree to disagree with your last part. night!