adelcrow wrote on Jul 10
th, 2010 at 10:13am:
I know a quite few Muslims, in Australia, Singapore, Malaysia and the way the media and right wing pollies portray Muslims in this country bears no resemblance to the reality of the situation.
There are drop kicks and extremists in every society but the vast majority of Muslims are no different to anyone else in how they live their lives and their hopes and dreams for themselves and their families.
I think way to many people take what they read and hear in the media as gospel truth instead of getting off their clackers and taking the time to make friends and socialize with people from different cultural and religious backgrounds.
Make the effort..You may be pleasantly surprised
Now that's the most sensible thing I've read here in a while.
There's many on this board that sit in their homes all day listening to Alan and watching Today Tonight. They haven't travelled to any Muslim countries or met any actual Muslims - a prerequisite, you'd think, for any for any informed knowledge on the subject.
But they live in a state of heightened panic about what Muslims
might do. The effect of the World Trade Centre bombings was so profound that, nine years later, Muslims present such fear to people in the West that every Muslim has come to be a suspect - a suspect of crimes that haven't been committed yet (but surely will if we don't maintain a heightened state of vigilance). The overwealming thought is "how
dare they?"
The blind, unquestioning hatred has become so profound that it blocks out any semblance of reason. The Ministry of Love, of course, keeps the fear alive. It's simple, and it's easy. You don't have to think too hard. The enemy is a vague and distant shadow, a muddled shape-shifter who rears into focus every now and then in a caricature, a parody of evil in an imaginary world, a world of illusion and rhetoric; Plato's cave.
The only terrorist attack we've had on Australian soil was done by the NSW Police's Special Branch - the Hilton bombing. We didn't have any Muslims back then, so they blamed a bunch of hippies; Ananda Marga. Tim Anderson and others spent years in jail until they were found innocent. The real bombers are still out there.
These are dangerous times, and every uncovered meat line uttered is filtered through the prism of self-riteous indignation: how
dare they?
Who do they think they are? The uncovered meat line was absurd, but Fred Nile puts out as much. Interesting that Fred Nile's now the vanguard of the circus-crusade.
Dangerous times? As dangerous as you want them to be. Muslims can't live in liberal democracies. Muslims can't live alongside anyone else - a self-fulfilling prophecy if there was ever one.
Still, Muslims do live in liberal democracies, and they do willingly live in pluralist societies all over the world. Times are changing, however, as fundamentalism takes a hold. Fundamentalism isn't just the poison of Islam, but a poison that effects the blood of all schools of thought. Parts of India, for example, have become torn by Muslim/Hindu rifts, where they were previously integrated. Both Muslims and Hindus blame this on "politics." It's interesting the way they see politics as something completely outside their power - a function of globalization and corporate hegemony.
I've always thought the less educated were more suceptible to fundamentalism, but this is proving to be untrue. Anyone can fall pray to it, and the more distanced we become from others, the more information we consume, the more we want simple answers. Instead of empathy, we search for isolation and exclusion. We want so badly to be
right, and we hide our feelings of powerlessness.
We don't live in villages anymore, where we know who does what and how things in our small world work. We're divorced from the product of our labour and the process that makes the things we consume. In the end, of course, we become alienated from our enemies - we don't know who they are anymore, so much so that they can be anyone we choose.
The Muslim serves well, but in a long tradition of enemies, he'll be replaced before long.