Saturday, March 6, 2010

The Intelligence² Debate: Europe is failing its Muslims?


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Aired March 6, 2010 on BBC World
From IntelligenceSquared.com:
Has Europe fallen into an "us vs them" mindset? Have Europeans nurtured the perception that Islam is alien to the continent? Do they know what to make of people who don't conform to their Enlightenment values?

Or do Europeans have good reason to associate Muslims with violence? Perhaps it's opposition to fundamentalist Islam which is really anti-fascist. Perhaps Islamophobia is just a constructed model designed to protect Islam from criticism, rather than individuals from discrimination.

The debate "Europe is failing its Muslims" took place on February 23rd at Cadogan Hall in London, in association with BBC World News and the British Council. Arguing in favour of the motion were Tariq Ramadan and Petra Stienen; against the motion were Douglas Murray and Flemming Rose.

9 comments:

  1. add some comment moderation to your BLOG OF BLASPHEMY


    http://nostraamerica.atspace.com/

    bye atheists!

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojR-XRt4rrA

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  2. <span>One of the dimmest, most unenlightening debates in a long time. Breathtakingly vapid, ill-considered arguments all around. One notch above "The Big Questions" type TV shows. Not worth watching.</span>

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  3. Both sides were shitty in their arguments IMO. iq2 doesn't give the speakers long enough to talk. Instead they allow the audience to ask about 50 questions, only about 2 of which get answered. Most of these questions are from muslims who came to the debate to support their own ideological beliefs are criticize others who disagree with them. They stand up and make a statement defending Islam, call the opposition assholes/racists and that's the end of the story. Political  correctness takes precedence once again.

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  4. dmabusa is either insane or a genius.  That webpage is all kinds of awesome.

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  5. more time with each side would have been nice  i agree, both had some good thoughts, be "brothers" in the sense of fellow human beings is ok but to divide in religious terms is a different thing. the idea that women in islam in the 7th century were better off than others has some merit but HELLO it is extremely backward in the 21st century, if they ( kuslims) cannot get to the pint where they can actualy think it remains a problem for the rest of the world. The 1st line of the koran basically disablbes / disallows critical thought - "this book is not to be criticised" - when there is sooo much to critisise!  somw good stuff but lots of silly and evil stuff as well ( much like the torah  /  bible of course )

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  6. R€LIGION $TINKS OF MONE¥March 7, 2010 at 6:47 AM

    I like how they dodged the homosexuality question.

    That dutch mp who patronisingly smiled at the gay man who had been shunned by his fellow muslim´s should be ashamed of herself. She either doesn´t take all kinds of bigotry seriously or she just didn´t know what to do with herself?  

    Christ, with the amount of red herrings that the muslim audience threw at the opposition, you have had enough for a smörgasbord.  Also the boohing was pretty indicative of the type of people in the audience. 

    I have noticed a lot of racism and prejudice within the muslim community. They are not unified. The Bosnian´s and Macedoian´s don´t consider Arabs over here to be European. Turks cannot stand the kurds or the Arabs who in turn look down their noses at the Pakistani´s. My Morocan friend refuses to visit Turkey and my Macedonian girlfriend has just moved from her neigbourhood because it was full of Arabs.  She really took issue with a fellow muslim colleague who kept refering to her as "sister". She told her to back off and not call her that. A bit like my vietnamese friend (who is gay) didn´t like that a co-worker from Africa immidiately assumed a fríendship based on their catholic backgound. She was pig ignorant and a bigot and also completely oblivious to the fact that he was gay. He couldn´t stand her at first sight.


    Secondly muslims came here at the own accord. Most of them came to western Europe in the late 60´s to find work and send money back to their villages. When they decided to bring in their wives, children and extended family did they bother to notice the society that they were bringing them into? They did see a conflict of values somewhere, otherwise the need to find spouses for their children and in the country of origin wouldn´t have occurred. It strikes me that a large part of the muslim community have their own biases to deal with. 

    I think that it is in large part it was the muslim parents of the first generation who has failed the 2nd and third generation muslims. That aspect was never highlighted. 

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  7. Lame debate. The Dutch MP was so filled with selective bigotry/ignorance she almost made me yell at the screen.

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  8. বিতর্কটা মজাদার তবে উপরে পলের সাথে একমত। সবচে মজা পেয়েছি বেচারা আইরিশ ক্রীশ্চান > মুসলিম > গে... আহারে... আইডেনটিটি ক্রাইসিস আর কাকে বলে। 

    English translation: 
    Agreeing with 'Paul' above, the debate was good, however, i found the Irish Ex christian turnned Muslim turned Gay very amusing... this is what we call Identity crisis... 

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  9. R€LIGION $TINKS OF MONE¥March 8, 2010 at 2:25 AM

    Amusing? Yeah, amusing like he wasn´t yet another suicide statistic.

    Not so much identity crisis. He was gay from the beginning and had to learn the hard way that most faiths reject people like him.  Fleeing from one homophobic community and running into the arms of another.

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