As some of you know, I blog on Active Rain (AR) a group primarily for realtors, mortgage brokers and others in the real estate arena. The site has a number of groups for non real estate discussion (religion, politics, humor, etc). Earlier today a member posted a blog that I am reposting here. Please read it through and comment:
[content to be reviewed deleted]
What are your thoughts on this?
I want open and free commenting, no worry about feelings getting hurt. I'm purposely reposting this here because AR has been cracking down on insults and displays of intolerance, including suspension of members. I respect AR and don't want to put any members in jeopardy.
The floor is open!
Note: this is not an all-access blog. I asked friends and colleagues for their opinions, not the whole world. If you were not on my distro, your comment will not be approved. Sorry.
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18 comments:
Sadly, this is pretty typical of modern America. I had an acquaintance from high school whose posts on Facebook I finally had to hide after he and his friends started ranting about the underpants bomber with comments along the lines of "the answer is simple: if you wear a towel on your head, you don't get on the plane".
It is a sickeness. And it's the easy way out. The trouble is, how do you navigate not between these fools and normal people, but moderate, common sense Muslims and radicals? Unfortunately, these people are getting currency from radicals AND the moderates who feel they cannot actively quash the radicals--especially if it's their own sons, nephews, brothers, even daughters.
Thanks Tchaka - I am going to go throw up now...
How dare this person publish this nonsense then follow it with a quote from scripture, "I do all things through Christ"? We have ourselves a real problem here.
Unfortunately many white-bread Americans who haven't been exposed to other cultures, countries, languages, relgious and traditions, are pretty intolerant of things that they don't understand. In the case of Islamic terrorists, the mass media has NOT done a very god job of isolating them as being a small sub-set of the whole religion to which they belong.
Those of us who have had the privelege and opportunity to live abroad part of our lives have had exposure to this. In my case, I lived in Indonesia for four years (and graduated high school there). Indonesians are some of the most tolerant and generally live-and-let-live people out there, despite being the largest Muslim country in the world by population. Does the vast majority of Americans know this? No!
Some really bad things have happened in Indonesia, including the Bali bombings (twice) and the two hotel bombings in Jakarta (more recently at Ritz Carlton). Again, these acts were found to have been perpetrated by small fringe groups of Indonesians who were under the influence of some of the same ones who committed September 11th and instigated the insurgencies in Iraq and now Afghanistan and Pakistan.
You can't write off a whole religion just because of a few nuts. God forbid, we have plenty of them right in the good old USA of the Fundamentalist Christian and White Supremacist varieties.
Read Wikipedia, in-depth magazines and newspapers like the New York Times/The Economist, and some books and you will learn it's much more complicated.
My two cents
Thanks everyone, so far we seem to be on the same page.
@DCRobbie - I agree with you. What I find most disappointing is that many of these same people won't take the time to educate themselves.
She is a Bigot, plain and simple with a closed mind along with her handfull of cronies
I've got one word...nauseating! What I find so funny is that the same email could be written about any and every religious group under the sun. When some Christian pops off and kills his family, we don't brand him a terrorist...just the psycho he is.
I find very interesing "There is no room in MY beautiful life for morons who can't see past the end of their nose." That would appear to be the only people surrounding this person. How beautiful can your life be when you imagine 21% of the world's population is actively trying to kill you?
I'd hate to guess what percentage of America is this ignorant. I really hope it's a much lower number than I think.
To me this sounds like the rant of an insane person... obviously a very racist person, and obviously an ignorant person. How sickening.
Tchaka, OMG I have heard some strange and radical stuff come out of that woman's mouth in AR but this one really tops all of it. She is definitely certifiable, and if not that, seriously misinformed and misguided. As one of your previous commentors said "I'm going to go throw up now."
BTW AR took that blog down! She should have been suspended for it.
Wow! What an ignorant little person she is. An intolerant Christo-fascist to boot. To think that she posts this bile with her company information for all to see.
The problem is not with Ms. Hunt, she is but a symptom. The root cause is ignorance which is perpetuated by an increasingly linear mass media. I will not rant against any particular outlet as the trend to dumb down the news, to find instant answers which can fit into 140 character sound bites or rolling script is pervasive across the media.
Politics, religion and the manner by which they are used to usurp power are complex issues to which there are no easy answers. Certainly one's head gear does not denote whether one is an enemy. As Americans we do not realize the chain of thoughts and stereotypes that someone wearing a baseball cap when they travel overseas unleashes.
The need to attack Islam and Muslims with ignorant racial slurs speaks more to a lack of faith on the part of the writer. Were her faith in the religion she purports to practice sufficiently deep she would feel compassion rather than hatred. It tell more about her than the people she vilifies.
I cannot however in the end blame her. Terrorism is scary. It strikes randomly even when one as an American might be a target. Fighting terrorism is not simple as there are no clearly defined targets, no Evil Empire or Axis of Evil on whom to blame everything.
I love the country which has the World's largest Muslim population. I have lost six friends in the Bali bombing and recently had others injured in the most recent hotel bombings in Jakarta. The vast majority of people here the majority of whom are Muslim condemned the bombings and the loss of life. The actions were not representative of how they feel about America or Americans.
In the same way I do not think that most Americans are as intolerant as the comments expressed by Ms. Hunt. But we must be vigilant so that her and similar comments do not become the commonly accepted mainstream rather than the insecure rantings of the fringe.
Terima Kasi Arian Ardie
Tchaka, this is the same reason the Founding Fathers fled England - to avoid this type of persecution. This is so sickingly un American- this is American nationalist fundementalism. Its always these faux patriots, are the first to advocate the repeal of civil liberties, but yet beat their chests and exclaim how much more and real American they are.
I dropped a few molotovs over on the blog post on AR deriding you for posting this blog here, but was deleted both times (censorship, ha!), anyway, the AR Gods came through, dealt punishment and pulled the blogs after a tongue lashing from the AR gurus.
I support this post 100%....
Nogui
Dan - Bisa bicara bahasa Indonesia? Bagus sekali!
Nogui - I saw your posts right before they got deleted. So much for freedom of speech. Bonnie thought she could bully me not realizing I was laughing at her whole blog. She didn't have all the facts yet she was spewing it and all these people were falling in line behind her. Meanwhile Tana was actually the good person in the end! (more on that in my next comment)
Arian - Your opening paragraph says tons and I agree with you. Too many people here in the US do not get the whole story, they get the bad news and the evil doings of extremists. Arab = Muslim = Terrorists here, rarely if ever is the American public exposed to the majority of Muslims being against the actions of the bad guys.
UPDATE
Although I am going to leave this blog up, I deleted the portion that I asked you guys to comment on. I am doing so for two reasons:
1. I had a long conversation with the individual who wrote it and a lot of remorse was expressed. I won’t go into details of the conversation for privacy reasons, but I found her to be a pretty nice person who just erred in judgment. This person has a career and I don’t want that to be hurt by this (more on that later).
2. ActiveRain apparently has a policy that is meant to protect what each member writes. I like ActiveRain and what it stands for (it’s really a great idea) and I am not willing to break their rules.
A number of individuals (mostly Conservative backers of the writer) who somehow found their way to this blog (note: the only people informed of it were my friends and colleagues) jumped on a copyright infringement bandwagon. It’s clear they did not research sufficiently (I did)…..I will leave it at that. And no, I don’t regret shunning law school!
Back to the earlier part about not hurting the person’s career, all the uninvited guests who found their way to the blog unwittingly (pun also intended) served to drive it up Google search. No one but my friends were told of this and I’m sure it was buried deep at the bottom of Google. I should probably congratulate the uninvited for demonstrating the success of going viral because I even had a racist, bigoted guy (who got kicked off of ActiveRain for repeatedly referring to homosexuals as “Sodomites”) attempting to comment on the blog. Um, I’m pretty sure he wasn’t on the list of friends & colleagues I asked to comment. So though I didn’t intend to hurt the writer, her alleged friends did manage to raise her profile on Google. It would be funny except that I mean it when I say I don’t want her hurt professionally. That’s not cool.
So this blog ends here. Thanks to all my friends who provided their opinions. Hopefully the future will bring a better portrayal of the good Muslims and not just the evil-doers.
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