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Originally Posted by fargon
Maybe what we need to do is restrict their trade and starve them economically. When these people started showing up, we embraced them and welcomed them into our country, and even gave their children priority admission to our colleges and universities. How did they repay our kindness? By telling us that we are stupid and beneath their contempt.
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My point, again, is that none of the Muslims in the US are protesting, none of them are rioting, none of them even seem to be upset about this. The people that are using these cartoons as an excuse are from several select countries that I think can easily be defined as "having issues" (economics, social standing, oppressive government, etc).
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Originally Posted by fargon
My sister Widget, had a b/f from the UAE who ran up a $1400 phone bill calling his friends back home. When she asked him to pay his bill he beat her up and slashed the tires on her car. I had to pay the phone bill, and replace her tires.
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You could have replaced 'UAE' with 'Australia', 'Brazil', or even 'Boston' and the story would have been just as plausible. One person should not allow you to draw a summary for all.
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Originally Posted by fargon
I decided at that time these people were shit. From that minute on, I have tried to avoid contact with them. In the mid 80s they started taking over the taxi business in SoCal, and used terror tactics to try and put me out of business. These aren't isolated incidents. In my experience, this is the typical behaviour of these people.
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I don't know about the taxi issues, but it sounds like you've had some bad, personal experiences with "these people". (Terror tactics? Did they blow up your car?) I don't know. I keep drifting time and time again to lumping all of the Muslim world into a group of people that I want to place a bad label on, but I have this awful feeling that our culture was in desperate need of a new boogeyman and that we're falling into the trap of media availability. I've never had a problem with a Muslim, never had any issues with someone practicing Islam. My old boss was a devout follower and he was a nice guy, a lot of my classmates are Muslim and they're no different than the other students. Studying with them never ended with me feeling hostile towards them, or even feeling remotely upset. My experience conflicts directly with what I hear spewing out of the television, so I take issue with it. Maybe I'm just lucky.
As far as I'm concerned, round'em up and ship'em home. Let them grow food in the desert.[/quote]
Great idea.
I once had the great idea of actually reading up on what Islam was all about and coming to a conclusion on just how I should view these people and their place in the world. ...and then I remember reading the bible and knowing that if I applied those values to all Christians, I'd probably want to kick every single one of them out of our country, too. But, hey, I've met some decent Christians in my life, so I'd feel a bit bad about that.