Answers To Unpublished Comments

The main point of the article I posted Saturday is that in almost all cases in North America and in the English language media in general, when we talk about the position of women, LGBT folk, religious and other minority groups in "Muslim countries", the real welfare of those people is almost never the real motive of the discussion or even the focus of it.   Those are, effectively, never discussed in a way that would make the lives of people living there better, in the real climate in which the exercise of their rights and the observation of their dignity will really exist.

We always and arrogantly ignore the reality of what is possible in those places, pretending, with no justification in history or current events, that we can imagine them into some western context.   Real women in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran, and elsewhere will continue to live in the places they live, with the people they live with.  They won't be magically transported into little bubbles of Paris or New York or London which will float through their cities and countries safe from being impinged on by the ambient culture.   What is possible in reality is the limit under which any improvements can happen in those places AND THAT IS NOT IN OUR HANDS TO DETERMINE.  The people living there have their own ideas based in their own experiences in their own commuities, countries and culture.  They've continued on just as long as we in the west have and they have a long history of bad treatment by westerners bad enough so they're really not that into us and really not into what negative ideas we think of them*.

That those self-denominated champions of realism present their Never-land scenarios in the context they make their claims in, such as the American and British entertainment industries,  should be the beginning of realizing they aren't really interested in the lives of those women or gay folk.   No, their song and dance on this issue uses them as a tool in their entirely western war against religion for an American and western audience who also don't really care about the rights of women, etc. in the real context in which what possible progress that can REALLY be made could be made.

The hate campaign of the Mahers, the Harrisses, etc. are certainly counterproductive in a REAL attempt to improve those peoples' lives.  Anything associated with those haters will be counterproductive. certainly the Brit-American style atheism that has made hating Muslims one of its mainstays will be far worse than merely counterproductive, it incites backlash with its every word and publicity stunt.

The stupid campaign of drawing offensive pictures of Muhammad is a good example.  It had nothing to do with improving the conditions under which people live in Islamic countries, it was a bratty "we'll show you" demonstration that in the west even the most irresponsible and ignorant "speech" is allowed, even as it has the potential to get lots of people in Islamic countries and elsewhere killed.  It had nothing, whatsoever to do with making the lives of anyone better except, the lives and careers of the ignorant, publicity seeking eternally adolescent jerks who started the thing.  And they were too ignorant, uniformed and stupid to realize that the fire they were lighting could burn them when they jumped up and down saying,  "Look at me, look what I can do!"

That was my point and it was a lot more serious than whether or not Maher is an asshole because lives are at stake.  Those who will be killed quickly, those who languish in quiet desperation not on American cabloid TV.

*  The complete dishonesty and disingenuousness of the cable TV atheist jerks can be seen in how, even as they launch their intellectual war on Islam - not to mention those such as Hitchens and Harris who advocated actual wars and nuclear obliteration - so many of the same jerks make the rote recitation of "The Crusades" in their short litany of crimes of Christianity and religion in general.  It's as if they don't really care that that crime -  a violation and negation of the gospel of Jesus I will insert - was actually waged against the ancestors of today's Muslims, who held the same religion which was the motive for the original Crusades they pretend to care about.   That their modern version of it enjoys atomic weapons, modern conventional weapons and communications and planning provided by the object of their worship, science, means that if they get their way the body count of the original Crusades will be dwarfed.

Note:  As Maher's goal of getting himself and his atheist buds attention seems to have worked, I suspect more will be said about this.

UPDATE:  Of course all of this current hatin' on the Muslims when it's Maher who's leading the hate will turn on a dime when it's some officially right winger, some FOX fixture of some self-appointed Reverend who is doing the hatin' and the same people who support Maher and Harrises hate talk will suddenly become lovers of Muslims.  Just to reinforce the fact that those guys don't care about what happens in Muslim countries and are all about what happens here and which side HERE they are on in the "saw tooth" flow of the zeitgeist, to reference one of Richard Dawkins' more asinine analyses.