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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
TinaS1
Published Letters: 780 Editor's Choice: 21
is a dull thinker who can't really get beyond mocking ethnic accents and BEV to get laughs, and her political "outrage" rings very false.
With all the women out there who are saying moderately intelligent things, I don't know why we have to keep hearing about Cho.
Note to editor: dumb choice of subject, in multiple senses.
Does anybody working on Broadsheet read anything besides Feministing, Huffpost, and Bitch PhD?
Because it seems these three blogs account for 100% of your ideas for posts.
Nope it's not complex. It's just a piece of cloth.
I'm going to encourage you to keep spilling your bile.
Give 'em enough rope......
really, truly, well meant comments. Please hear me out.
Someone may have told you that if you convert to Christianity you get a visa out of your country, but this is absolutely not true. If they told you this, they were trying to deliberately mislead you and I am sorry to hear that (but of course, missionaries will do anything, and I'm no fan of them). Missionaries do not make visa decisions. They could apply for one of their converts based on a case of needing asylum (protection), but the chances are extremely high that person would be rejected, even if there were specific threats against their life.
If what you were told were true, there would be a flood of nominal converts. The USCIS website has a list of all the ways to legally enter the States.
Next, your assertion that Islam must be good because many people follow it. This is known as a Bandwagon Fallacy--"because many people do it, it must be right". If you say this, it won't take long for someone to point out that there are over 1 billion people who are Christians, so Christianity must be the correct relgion. Then someone will say that there are 1 billion Hindus, so that religion must be just as good as Islam. Or, they might say that lots of people are murderers--hundreds of millions of them. Does that make murder okay? No, of course it doesn't.
So, the fact that many people are Muslims now does not mean that it follows that Islam is great. That doesn't mean that you are wrong, just that you have used a weak way of explaining your point. If you want to prove that Islam is good, you have to do that another way.
Google "Bandwagon Fallacy" for more examples.
As a matter of fact, you might want to read through some things on "Fallacies of Argument". "Fallacy" just means an argument with poor logic. The problem with using poor logic is that people can easily turn that against you. Then, even if you know you are right, it is very frustrating.
Hope to hear from you in future threads and thanks for joining the discussion. You'll get better and better and soon you'll be beating us all ;)
Nashnushi is correct in stating that there is too much mindless Muslim bashing in the world. I just wish we could separate the true haters and bashers from the people who are just trying to have a discussion and come to some conclusions on a very convoluted topic.
And lillianjane, Mark Twain and William Thackery both considered travel to be superior to school as a form of education, and felt it should be required. So there's nothing wrong with Tim's comment per se, except that, as you point out it's impossible for many people (Thackery pretty much only had rich British boys in mind), and as a specific criticism of myself, I've already done that....10 years abroad, 15 countries and counting....
You know, when I think back on it, one woman I knew went to live in the Gulf and was basically so shocked to find out that Muslims were--gasp!--HUMAN that she jumped right into their arms and converted. Because once you get to know them, they are so nice.....! (me slapping my forehead)
Yes, yes, of course many of them are. Some of the men are the nicest, kindest I've ever met, and the women treated me like true sisters. But I've always been a scrapper, I couldn't take my Baptist family's fundie crap...only skirts, no shorter than 2 inches below the knee, submit to your husband as to the church, etc.......and the longer I was in Islam, I realized they had all that too and I couldn't take it from them either...not going to go into specific incidents, but now I'm out.
Because I was raised in that mindset it took me a long time to realize I could be free from it and be happy--although granted I have to be more responsible now, and sometimes I miss the social life and community--but I know that doesn't make the rest of it all right.
Well, getting personal now, better end this one....
travel is an great for all groups of people except one.....
Christian fundies who go on those mission-tourism thingees where they help build churches in Guatemala for four days and then go sightseeing to Tikal for a week, or paint a missionary orphanage in Kenya and combine it with a lion safari that's longer than their "mission" work. This is all the vogue in the affluent, conservative Christian baby boomer community.
I swear, these people come back having learned nothing, absolutely nothing, besides "how lucky we are to live in America". All these "mission trips" do is reinforce their sense of superiority and entitlement. It just makes my skin crawl.
No amount of travel will do anything for these people, sorry to say so.
But yeah, for everybody else, the more the better.
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Once seen as a lunatic fringe, reactionary anti-women groups are courting respectability
Salon headlines in your mailbox
