A St. Cloud town hall meeting at 6 p.m. Tuesday invites people of all faiths and backgrounds to discuss a recent anti-Muslim incident in the city.
The meeting will give citizens a chance to talk with community leaders about concerns they may have, said Taneeza Islam, the civil rights director for the Minnesota chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-MN), one of more than a dozen organizations sponsoring the event.
…The incident involved cartoons, discovered Dec. 8 by a St. Cloud Muslim shopkeeper. They included vulgar depictions of Islam’s Prophet Muhammad, as well as an Islamic crescent with a swastika inside it, and were posted outside the store and in front of a mosque. Sidney Allen Elyea, 41, admitted to posting the cartoons and was cited with violating a city ordinance that prohibits posting materials on utility poles. Prosecutors in Stearns and Benton counties declined to press criminal charges, saying that the cartoons should be considered free speech.
Awww…. Does the Moslem community not like being thought of as a hateful bunch of warmongers, just because they (not al Qaida, but huge masses of ‘normal’ Moslems) murdered people because a cartoon was published? Do they think, “hey, a cartoon was published in a paper, so I can go out and murder innocent people and there will be no repurcussions”?
Here are two pictures. Both will anger religionists, but only one puts people at risk of death from a pathetic backward mythology (note all mythologies are pathetic and backwards in their own right, but only one SPECIAL mythology murders detractors, as well as innocents because detractors exist).
You should study Christian history more carefully. And talk to assorted gay/lesbian/transgender groups about how non violent and passive Christianity is. Abortion doctors and clinics might also want to weigh in on the subject as well. There is no difference between these religions, one is not more evil then the other, one is not more or less guilty of takings actions against people.
We have been lucky in the United States in regards to the evils of Christianity because they have not had the foot hold into the governmental powers that Islam has had in the middle east but make no mistake if they establish themselves into the power structure as Bush the Son wanted, there would be no difference between the religious zealots in the middle east and the religious zealots in the U.S.
The trial of a man has just begun that walked into a church and killed an usher who was a late term abortion doctor. The only difference between the two of them is in quantity, and if the Christian religion consolidates its gains under Bush the Son and really gains political and government power, I sure that the quantity gap would close quickly.
I’m not for a second debating what you write Mark, and I know very well the wonders of Christian violence.
What I am saying is that Moslem violence is spurred by much less than performing abortions. Moslem violence begins with cartoons, or books, or speech,and the benefactors of Moslem violence are often unrelated to the cartoons (that’s what terrorism is – punishing innocents for the acts of others).
David Silverman
It is difficult not to notice that your blasphemy only extended to Christians and Muslims. Where is the star of david with the swatiska in its center? You should you original post to include such blasphemy as well. Why not?
I wonder if silverman would be as much an advocate of free speech if a cartoon had been tacked to the door of a synagogue depicting israeli jews as nazis? there isnt even any pretense anymore that AA has a pro jew bias, is there?
Yes, it’s inarguable that if Christians “establish themselves into the power structure … there would be no difference between the religious zealots in the middle east and the religious zealots in the U.S.” Uh huh, just like the Islamo-fascists, all us Christians are just itchin’ to launch a bloody crusade against non-Christians the moment we achieve the “political power” necessary…
Careful Dave, by “not debating” what he writes, you come dangerously close to exposing yourself as being as deluded and detached from reality as that certifiable lunatic.
To JCC
Oh there is a certifiable lunatic who posts on this site, but it is not me. So are you back on your medication yet, I guess not from your posts. Shame I will pray to the one true God or Gods that your delusions of grandeur be replaced with delusions of being a normal intelligent human being, but chances are you will remain the religiously delusional person that you were born to be.
As for the potential for Christian Abuse if given the political power base that they seek, all one has to do is look to their history. I could maybe have a Séance and bring forth all of the innocent souls murdered by the followers of the most loving and caring and forgiving God Jesus, but it would take the rest of eternity to get all of their statements.
Which loves to repeat itself, especially because the majority of humanity is too stupid to learn from it.
I’m going to have to go along w/some of these folks, David. Where IS the 3rd monotheistic religion?
Also note that no Catholics rioted @ the comparison of Ratzi & Palpatine.
Wow you all read into things. I’m surprised nobody noticed that I was only picking on the Catholics and not the Protestants?
or the Hindus?
Because I was making a point that Islam is EXTRA primitive, compared to the other major mythos in the country. I wanted to make a point about relativism, and I frankly found the pope picture first.
When I make a point about one religion vs another, I am not going to go out of my way to include religion after religion just so I don’t appear to favor one over the other. Take my point at face value.
To Dave
Actually if I had known it was you who posted the first post I would have been less intense. I like you and like what you are doing, but I must say that if one criticizes one Faith then one must criticize all Faiths equally. You seem to have a hard on for the Islamic Faiths. I on the other hand have a hard on for the Christian Faiths. I do not care about the Islamic Faiths, or Buddha faiths or the Martian Faiths or the spaghetti monster who circles mars eating asteroid faiths.
Because none of those faiths affect me as an American citizen. I could care less about Allah or Allah’s beliefs or commandments. Because Allah is not about to become a political movement in America any time soon. Allah is not going to convert America into a Theocratic dictatorship any time soon. Christianity can and will do all of these things soon.
Obama will not be reelected the Republican/Christian war machine has and will succeed in making him a one term president. Which means we will have a president who is a Republican/Christian puppet once again and all of the damage that Bush the Son did will be reinforced. The appellate courts and supreme court will be dominated by zealots into the many decades ahead.
I really could not care about Islam or the Christian Crusade against Islam because soon the Christian crusade against America will make it appear as trivial. As an American Atheist I would have hoped that you would already be aware of the simple fact that Islam cannot destroy America, Only Christianity can do that.
To David
I understand what you are saying, all I am saying is that if Christianity remains unchecked then what we see as the extremes of Islam today is what we will see here in the United States tomorrow. I went to several Gay/Lesbian/Transgender meetings after Bush the Son was first elected and warned them of the threat that Christianity could pose to them with Bush the Sons election and the threat would be even greater if he was reelected.
They pretty much brushed it off and said they were not worried about the future they were only interested in what could be accomplished today. I think that history has shown that I was correct. While Atheists and non Christian Theists look at the Christian problem from a legal and intellectual stand point, I do not I see Christianity as the embodiment of evil in this country.
I care little about other organized beliefs that may be just as false, just as misleading and just as evil as Christianity because non of those other beliefs are trying to turn the United States into a Theocracy. Christianity on the other hand is, when I look at Christianity I see it the same way that a zealot does when watching two flaming homosexual males standing on a street corner French kissing and feeling up each others crotches or arses.
I feel towards Christianity the same disgust, scorn and hatred for them that the zealot feels towards those two homosexual men. The same Christian Pr?ck that put those cartoons and sign in front of a Islamic temple, is the same kind of Christian Pr?ck that paints swastika’s onto Jewish temples or the same kind of Christian Prick that burns down Atheist bill boards or threatens the bill board company or the owner of the land that the bill board is on.
As far as I am concerned that Christian Pr?ck should be charged under the same statutes that a White Supremacist would be charged with for burning a cross on the door step of a black Americans home or Business. There is a big difference between posting things on your own property or in a magazine or news paper and putting those things right in front of the home or business of the person that you are bigoted against.
I am built like a Georgia Red Neck from the ground up and I once protested outside of a black Baptist church off and on for a couple of months because I had a problem with the pastor of that church, but I checked with the police, I was parked on a public street and had my SUV set up as a mobile bill board and did it in broad daylight and had no problem whatsoever in demonstrating my displeasure with the pastor.
This Christian Pr?ck snuck in, in the dead of night and set up his garbage, and snuck away again like the piece of scum that he was and he only gets a slap on the hand and is told that he is a bad boy who needs to play nice. If a Islamic man had done the exact same thing to a evangelical church in the exact same way, Home Land Security would have landed on his arse like a ton of bricks and his head would not have stopped spinning until he was getting off the boat at Gitmo.
yeah David…..please bash all of monotheism…..they equally suck the same
F#ck Yahweh. There. Feel better?
thanks Dave…..and thank you for all your work running this blog
Does it really matter? All the same damn God =P
works for me. F#ck all the male dominant, vagina-fearing godz out there. But remember, when you’re f#cking them, size does matter!
David Silverman
Your self-censored “Fuck Yahweh” is not good enough. Not by a long shot! I want to see that picture of a Star of David with a swastika in its center or a menorah with seven swastikas burning over the candles. Until you make that unapologetic post then it will be clear that your chastising of others for a lack of will to stand up to self-censoring out of fear of retribution from theists will be nothing but empty words from a coward.
I’m all for criticizing religions equally, demands of a swastika are way over the top.
Next you’ll demand he cheer the holocaust.
To Peters
I do not know what your hard on is concerning David and the Jews, I do not know enough about this conflict to really comment on it. But as for the Jews I consider them no different then any other false belief. They claim they are righteous in the eyes of their God and yet cannot provide any evidence that their God exists beyond their imagination. Personally if I was a Jew who had a God do the things or allow the things that were done to the Jews as being divine righteousness and God given I would find a new God rather quickly.
As for the holocaust who gives a shit. Over twenty million people died at the hands of Hitler and the Nazis’ and of that twenty million only 6 million were Jews if there was a holocaust it was not against the Jews. And please remember that Hitler claimed to be a devout Christian at the time. As far as Israel goes when you steal a whole lot of land from someone who wants that land then you need to be ready to die for that land. Then UN was as stupid in given the Moslem lands to the Jews as Bush the Father and Son were in trying to fight a Crusade in the Moslem holy lands.
But to tell you the truth I am about as sick and tired of your snipping of David as I can get. If David has a soft spot for the Jews I really could not give a shit. So long as he is part of American Atheists and fights against the Christian tyranny in America I could care less if he is sleeping with a covert Mossad Agent. The only thing that I give a damn about is curbing Christian Zealot influence in America the rest of the world and it’s religious can burn for all I care. So give it a break.
I suspect that the whole point is lost in arguing about which religion is the most guilty. Dave is doing the right thing by pointing the finger at whichever guilty party committed the most recent attrocity.
All points have merits, but even including Timothy McVeigh, Marshall Applewhite, Jim Jones, Charles Manson, and all the abortion clinic bombings and abortion doctor assassinations pale in significance to the blind religious and tribal murders in the middle east. That’s quite ironic, that while the West is the great hated Satan, they have killed more of each other than they have westerners. Kill some revered member of a rival community, then bomb their funeral. Kill some innocent partiers, then bomb the response team.
While I agree the potential for violence in the Christian culture is horrendous, as any period of history proves, their most potentent weapon in modern America is their vote. Sheer numbers of idiots who still think that when a politician runs on a conservative family platform that he can take us one step back into the old days when you didn’t have to lock your doors at night. They wanted Terry Schiavo to live out her days on a feeding tube, and even got Congress to force the State Supreme Court to review the case. Yeah, religion is the false guide, but how will we ever delete the uneducated naive atomatons that give them their power with their vote. Oh, gee, wait, maybe that means, like all other human institutions, democracy doesn’t work either.
NeoWolfe
You still owe me about 3 apologies, Mowgli.
Name one nation today that is a democracy.Even the early Greek democracy upon close examination wasn’t so nice if you happened to be a slave/woman/minor or non greek.
You make good points though Neowolfe maybe what is needed is proof of at least a high school diploma or property ownership.Something that shows one has a stake in the community.The media doesn’t help all candidates being human have defects but the media tries to play kingmaker.And what can the average voter do when they have only preselected candidates to choose from.Bush/gore/kerry were candidates from hell so were obama/mccain and biden/palin.
To NeoWolfe
Democracy can work when there is a check and balance in place. When the majority claims that the rights of a minority should denied because their sky high imaginary God claims it should be done, and the supreme court says sorry but not a chance in hell. Then democracy can work, but when the majority of the supreme court is made up of the same zealots as the majority and believes that the laws of their imaginary sky daddy be supreme then democracy ends and dictatorship begins. And of course once that happens we are all F?cked.
I’ve heard that smutty sex pictures also tend to trigger their “must kill responsible person” brainwash mode too. I think the best way to defuse a Muslim’s angst is by attacking the Jewish religion. I’m not saying hate the person, just that we should be attacking the religion. For instance, if I were to tell a Muslim that Jewish religious beliefs about stoning people to death for being different are sick and archaic, well, maybe the Muslims wouldn’t take it personally but would reflect on their own beliefs. Booom, that’s killing two, nay three if you count the Christian off shoot, moronic belief systems with one stone.
….Imagine an atheist public service announcement that says
“Stoning people to death is dumb, dangerous, and illegal. Any religious book that supports the practice of stoning is also dumb and dangerous, and practicing that religious teaching is also illegal. If you agree with this sentiment then you should join the cause of American Atheists”
Actually, I wouldn’t mind seeing many different public service announcements of that kind on television.
In the public service announcements, just replace the words “stoning people to death is dumb, dangerous, and illegal” with “seeking miracle therapy healing as opposed to a doctor is dumb and dangerous” or with “sacrificing animals on the alter is dumb, dangerous, and illegal” or “fasting for 40 days is dumb, dangerous, and highly lethal” etc, etc, etc.
Or how about one that says “Gravity does not care about how much religious faith you have when you walk over the edge of a cliff”, or “Having faith in religion does not protect you from drinking all kinds of poisons. That behaviour is dumb, dangerous, and potentially lethal, and therefore any religions that teach that practice are also dumb and dangerous”….etc.
KA, it’s easy to win an argument when you are deleting oposing opinions. Instead of 3 apologies, how about 3 fuck you’s. Real free thinkers may log in at this website: http://freethinker.co.uk/
You could have got away with deleting my responses, but you fucked up when you deleted dw.
NeoWolfe
I’M.NOT.DOING.THAT.
Ah, cause I’m not a ‘true scotsman’.
Sayeth “Mr. Maturity”.
Now you are talking some truly crazy shit. I’ve not deleted any of your responses, but I’ve never had any issues w/DW. WTF are you talking about, exactly?
The spam filter is set so high that when I made a comment on a recent post it blocked the comment. It was the post on abstinence funds drying up. KA had nothing to do with it, it was the spam filter.
Thank you, DW. Neowolfe’s now up to 4 apologies that he owes me. That is, if he is indeed the liberated freethinker he keeps boasting he is.
Sorry that you got dragged into our ridiculous pissing match.
ISLAM is a collectivist cult that imposes the death penalty for leaving it or trying to convert a muslim.Christians/Jews aren’t doing that nowadays.
We face a problem if violent islam goes unchecked than it is only a matter of time before christians/jews respond in kind.Already two west bank rabbis have published a book called the king’s torah that claims it is not a sin to kill nonjews.Islam does not have a tradition of equal rights for non muslims not even in supposedly secular nation of turkey.
To reason
Actually Islam prior to the plague of Christianity was a very open and forgiving religion. If you have seen the movie or any documentaries on the 300 Spartans, Islam at the time would allow cities to keep their own city governments and city religious beliefs. They did not care what the captured cities believed so long as they submitted to the Persian empire.
Mecca at the height of it’s wealth and power paid for all training of anyone who wanted it. If you went into Mecca and did not find a temple or church dedicated to your God they would build a temple or church to your God and fund it. Islam did not go bad until they had been attacked and persecuted by Christianity to the extent that all things non Islamic became an enemy and should be killed on sight.
Uh, aren’t you mixing things up a bit? Christianity is older than Islam. And if you are talking about Spartans and Persians, there weren’t any Christians then, either.
But you have a point about Islamic tolerance. Until the Crusades, they tolerated Christians. They didn’t like them, but they tolerated them. The pope started it all by sending all those knights and soldiers to the Middle East to get them out of Europe, where they were making a lot of trouble and starting little wars. There weren’t enough jobs in France or Germany, so they invaded another country to get rid of the surplus population.
To Dorky Momma
Damn I hate getting cocky and being caught with my pants down. I have to go to work now but will write up a good post worthy of the spanking you just gave me.
To Dorky Mommy
Ok now to try and pull my foot outa my mouth. I have never done any kind of in-depth study of Islam simply because I care so little about it. I assumed that it followed the same path that Christianity did. The Jewish, Christian and Islamic beliefs all accept the Jewish Patriarchs as being prophets, chosen of God. While Christianity branched off of the Jewish beliefs and became a new religion, their foundation was built upon the Jewish beliefs.
Jesus was the jump off point for Christianity. And while they became a new belief, they still held onto some of the old beliefs. I applied the same concept to Islam, while Islam came into being 400 years after Jesus, I assumed that Mohammad was simply the jump off point of a preexisting belief. I knew that Islam held the patriarchs of the Jewish belief in high regards and believed that the jump off point of Muhammad was from an existing belief system separate from Judaism.
The belief system of the Persian Empire during Xerxes, was Zoroastrian. Which was a pretty tolerant belief system. Xerxes and those before him brought city states into the Persian Empire and had no problems with the existing leadership or existing beliefs of those city states, I had simply assumed that Islam was a branch off of this belief system since Islam held to that understanding up until the first Crusades started.
But since you made me actually research this, it appears that Islam is basically a stand alone belief system that incorporated elements of other belief systems. But that Mohammad appears to have created the Koran and Islam from scratch and created it’s foundation instead of simply growing from the foundation of an already existing belief system. He appears to have incorporated other aspects of other beliefs into Islam but that Islam itself had its own foundational beliefs.
So I apologize for my cockiness in not researching more about Islam before making my post and do thank you, I do need to be reminded every so often that I actually do not know all and see all other then in regards to Christianity. They suck, their history sucks, and they are a false religious beliefs based upon lies and deceptions and are unworthy of respect.
My suggestions for bill boards.
1) The bible lies
2) The Christian priesthood Lies
3) Burn your Bible and save your Soul
4) Jesus died, get over it already
5) I called God about Christianity, He said call Satan
6) I called God and asked what evil is, he told me to call the crystal cathedral
7) I called God and asked who is evil, he told me to call the Vatican
Those are kinda lame… I liked your previous ideas better about stoning. Better yet, just quote the Bible (who’d vandalize that?):
“utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling…” [Samuel 15:3]
the bible is full of tons of incriminating, billboard-ready quotes…
The Crusaders were fighting to reclaim Christian land from muslims.The muslims won the Crusader wars and since this also was several centuries ago blaming current islamic violence on Christians is pointless.
Off topic
David
Why no mention of the latest allegations of money laundering against vatican bank? And nothing about the west bank Israeli rabbis publishing a torah that claims it isn’t a sin to kill gentiles,that is the last place to need more religious fanatics.
To Reason
There were no christian lands for the crusaders to reclaim. Heck I am not Muslim and I still blame all of the evils in this world upon Christianity, Heck I will even blame them for the extinction of the dinosaurs.
send me links.
It should be noted that the picture in of the Pope in Ireland, is illegal. Although I don’t think that anyone has been arrested because of the blasphemy law yet, it’s still there. Also as pointed out earlier, while not as vocal about blasphemy, there are ultraconservative Christians who favor putting to death people who go against their faith, examples, the homosexual laws in Uganda and witch burnings. Also historically Christianity has been as vile as Islam when it comes to blasphemy.
I think its time plus wealth that mellows out a religion. As a nation and the people acquire more wealth, extremism tends to die down. If life is good, why upset the apple cart?
Sasquatch Jesus
All religions are the same in at least one respect… they expect everyone to observe their specific religion and they carry on as if it is the only religion that counts. This is especially true of fundamentalist religions but the self-righteousness is present in all. Some say that they tolerate others, but it is a shallow toleration, in that, even though they acknowledge other beliefs at the same time they consider them roads to hell.
Islam is especially intolerant, for it is blasphemy to even criticize Islam.
Dw your okay in my book but lets get this straight being a self-righteous hypocrite is one of the few joys in life for me.And i’m not giving it up.
Have you heard about the new vatican bank scandal? I haven’t seen anything on the msm.
Is this a new one? I haven’t seen anything either.
If I remember correctly, the Pope’s excuse to reclaim Christian lands in Palestine held about as much water as GW’s excuse to invade Iraq because of the 9-11 events. When a boy wants a fight, he can usually find an excuse.
But the Crusades are over, and we must live in this century. However, wouldn’t it be nice if we had made some progress in 1000 years?
To Dorky Mommy
Unfortunately until we accept that Religious beliefs are nothing more then individual opinions that apply only to the individual it is unlikely that any real progress can be made.
For a well deserved laugh: http://www.mrdeity.com/
These bits are priceless. Mr. Deity and the Identity Crisis is my all time favorite episode.