wasneeplus:

ccdohl:
What's for a xenophobic turd to fail to understand? Some people get murderously violent because of a religion, about 99% of the time, it's a certain religion. I don't have to get a degree in Islamic Studies or anything to want to put a boot to it.

Except it ain't muslims 99% of the time. At the moment, Islam is probably the most violent large religion on earth, but only by a small margin. So what? We gonna boot out all the christians and hindus next?

To be fair both historically and in modern times Hindus have been resonably calm. Historically Christianity has been one of the most violent organizations of all time, mostly due to crusades and inquistions, along with witch burnings and the like. In the modern world however most christians live in first world countries that universally look down on religous bigotry meaning most modern Christians, even the fundementalists, will rarley use physical violence. Islam on the other hand has a history of acceptance and tolerance... and not so much in modern times, where it claims the worlds most violent major religion with a large margin.

This comic.

Pure GENIUS

For once, I think Sharon has a point.

Mygaffer:

I.Muir:
That was amusing
well done

Seems to me that sensitivity is just another way of saying don't piss off the fanatics that can't behave like civilized people so firebomb places when they get upset. Some misled governments have not brought the hard end of a truncheon down on this kind of behavior yet so we're encouraged to just not provoke them at all instead. With exceptions, vocal minority yada yada yada except it might not be a minority.

Of course religion isn't to blame, just stupid people holding the same opinion/ belief.

Care to show me some cases where the government didn't prosecute people known to have comitted crimes such as "firebomb places when they get upset"?

I meant more metaphorically but I suppose it was a stupid example
It just seems dumb that a person can't have a perfectly stupid and almost suicidal opinion without actually having a good portion of the world trying to kill you

hmm....

Sharon has gotten hotter of late

I have crazy voices in my head! I feel like Erin

Like all religions, Islam is ripe territory for comedy, but it's hard to tell if your audience is laughing because your joke is funny, or because they're xenophobic turds looking for any excuse to put the boot in on a religion they don't even begin to understand.

Sadly, it's usually the second one.

The silver lining however is that it's not exclusive to religious jokes. Basically any joke being mocking or condescending to a specific person or group of people is gonna get a few laughs more because of the audience thinking "yeah, FUCK those guys! I agree!" and less that the joke was actually funny.

I mean, shit, look no further than a few choice comments pertaining to the comic. Regardless, you guys don't have to worry too much about that being the case in this instance. The strip was genuinely funny, even if it's indirectly taking shots at me.

On the plus side, at-least we can't say Erin's prejudiced: She appears to hate all religions the same amount, although i find the imaginary friends statement partly ironic given the previous arc.

ccdohl:
There also aren't any Christian theocracies out there than put people to death for adultery or blasphemy.

O how wrong you are.

Edit:
http://www.businessinsider.com/geron-pastitsios-2012-9
blasphemy charges

Historicly, Christianity is just as guilty as any other religious group when it comes to prosecution and sectarian violence. Muslems are just getting a bad spotlight due to extremists in that culture being a part of the mystical 'other' played by popular fanatical media sources.

As for the overall discussion - I do beleive mankind is slowly inching itself away from religion as a source of dogmatic beleif, and more as the refrence towards a philosophy of life (which I have always beleive was the actual point of religion, the stories are supposed to be lessons to learn how to live by, and not to be taken as serious history.) However, this is being accompanied by an exidous of actual religious pratice and a rise of individualistic mentalities, especially among western cultures.

The one thing Religion did well was create and moderate local growth communities, and while I agree that the adherence to dogma can't go the way of the dodo soon enough, an alternative mean of creating a culture focused on the sense of charity and unity needs to take its place or we're headded in a bad direction as a species.

In my opinion, it should be more important to presuve religious culture from corruption within than it is to concern yourself with outside influences.

There are several philosophies and pratices that most religions have in common. Yet historicly it is the differences, mostly dogmatic, that has caused the most harm and warfare in our human history.

"Forget the fact that both of our religions preach peace, charity, humility and goodwill, I'm going to murder your children and rape your wife because you beleive in a differen't prophet than mine."

direkiller:

ccdohl:
There also aren't any Christian theocracies out there than put people to death for adultery or blasphemy.

O how wrong you are.

killing children as witches
&
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uganda_Anti-Homosexuality_Bill
"Africans see homosexuality as being both un-African and un-Christian"
death penalty for gay sex

Gotcha. Admitted that I was wrong on page 3.

Whatever you did to her nose in panel 2, looks cute.

Mygaffer:

I.Muir:

Mygaffer:

Care to show me some cases where the government didn't prosecute people known to have comitted crimes such as "firebomb places when they get upset"?

I meant more metaphorically but I suppose it was a stupid example
It just seems dumb that a person can't have a perfectly stupid and almost suicidal opinion without actually having a good portion of the world trying to kill you

I hate to use this terminology, because it sounds stupid, but lets "get real" for a moment here.

Anyone here in the US can espouse any unpopular opinion they want. Remember that preacher who was going to burn the Koran? There was a lot of backlash and protesters showed up, mostly white, non-muslims btw, and one kid even took the Koran out of his hands. He eventually gave up on his idea. But no Muslim extremist group threatened him, they would probably like because they could use it as propaganda.

Professional media organizations, and I don't just mean news, I mean TV, movies, music, games, etc., are ALL very sensitive to offending groups. Not just Muslims though, any religion (big enough to cause them trouble at least), sexual orientation, or race. It is the country we live in where these guys are so afraid of offending anyone and facing bad publicity or protests that they would much rather change something than take the risk of a PR black eye.

Now for the "real" part, a lot of this backlash against any Muslim protest is really coming from a bigoted place. I don't really blame most people for this as they are just responding to the 9/11 attacks, to the war that was launched afterwards in the Middle East, and most people don't know or understand the history of that region and how US policy actually created most of the mess we are in now.

I am not Muslim but I have a Middle Eastern name and half of my family is Muslim. The other half is Christian. I of course ended up an atheist. But I have had cops ask me if I am Muslim. Have you ever been asked by a cop if you were Christian? I have had customers in my store tell me about how "those people are killing US troops" and "we should turn the whole place into a glass parking lot" sometimes not realizing they are talking about my family, sometimes knowing they are talking about my family. Have you had someone tell you that your family, aunts, uncles, little cousins five years old, should be killed and wiped from the earth? You don't think that is a form of personal terrorism?

I hear people say things like "We need to really put it to those Muslims" and no one gets upset or says that is not OK. If you were to say "The police really need to put the truncheon to the blacks in this country" people would be appalled and denounce you.

I understand where this sentiment is coming from but I still think it is morally wrong. People are people. I lived in Iran for a year when I was younger. The nicest people you will ever meet live in Iran. If you go over there as an American you will get all smiles and invitations to dinner. Are these the people you want to bring the truncheon down on? Are these the people we should destroy in atomic hellfire? Because if that is the case we might as well just set the nukes off and kill off all of humanity because none of us are better.

Oh jese you have me confused with the we should nuke that country kind of person
It irritates me to my very bones that you think that, it is truly insulting.
I am well aware that people within any given ethnic group or religion are still just plain old good and friendly person and I think you jumped to that conclusion way too fast, so hop off your high horse for a moment.
However for those few but it really does not seem like a few at the moment, that pick up molatov cocktails give up the right to not get shot by rubber bullets. To have the full force of the law, truncheons included brought down upon them. If you did not notice I did point out that opinions such as the one you seem to be assuming that I have are stupid and in this case suicidal. However even if they should hold such an opinion they should be free from violence as their words mean nothing, NOTHING and people should realize that. If they did not want to get this stupid opinion out, they have now exposed it to the world.

I'm also in favor of total nuclear disarmament
The rest of the world is better off if you don't even retaliate to being nuked

Stewart Lee and Chris Morris recommendations, you have got some very good tastes in comedy.

Fwweeeeeeeee. Religion. Oh goody. Let's put on our happy hats. [/sarcasm]

I take no one who considers religion peaceful seriously. Throughout human existence, religion easily has been, is and will continue to be the leading cause of human death on this planet and thanks to the "God" excuse, it will allow religion to continue that legacy of violence. Along with Stewart Lee and Chris Morris, allow me to add two past comedians: Bill Hicks and George Carlin.

But in dealing with "God", and what it has caused over the course of our existence, I did something very reminiscient of what the late Mr. Carlin would have done: I looked to define "God". Not in a dictionary kind of way (though I did turn to several of them), but in a universal sense - something that could apply to all of us, regardless of belief or stance on the matter. Thus, my search took me back to the Greeks; basically where our system of governing and language came from. In this, I discovered some very crucial things. I will single them out for importance:

God = Theos

Speaking specifically, the word "God" is a direct translation of the Greek word "Theos", thus they are the same word. However, in finding the word "Theos", I found another similar word "entheos" which, when translated, means "god within" or "having the god within". Finding this, I went to look and see if there was an English word for "entheos" since this word was close to sounding like a few of our English words and sure enough:

entheos = enthusiasm

The word enthusiasm, as best I could find, means "great excitement or interest, strong liking or appreciation in something". Oddly enough, enthusiam was a word originally strongly associated with religion. One last discovery made this research very rewarding for me:

If the words are the same, then, by that assumption, their definitions are also the same or equal to each other.

Ergo, "god within" = "great excitement or interest, strong liking or appreciation in something".

This alone was not enough, however. In addition to this, I had to research the big three religious books - the Christian Bible, the Jewish Tanakh and the Islamic Koran (or Qu'Ran, whichever you prefer) - for something that unified all three, outside of their discourse and history of violence. Again, what I found both amazed and astounded me: all three of these religions record Jesus as no less than a Major Prophet of God. They also record his golden rule, "Do Unto Others As You Would Have Them Do Unto You". Now that I had all of this information, I combined it form my opinion and definition of "God":

"If you have god within you, and you do unto others as you would have them do unto you, then you will find peace and appreciation for life."

Now, how religious leaders and figures have missed this little tidbit of religious history for the past 3000+ fucking years is simply a goddamned mystery to me!

With that, I will return to what I enjoy, where I will infringe upon no one and leave everyone to what they appreciate.

Oh dear, Erin, you have to remember that most people don't like being reminded that the things they do for an imaginary friend are crazy.

wasneeplus:

ccdohl:
What's for a xenophobic turd to fail to understand? Some people get murderously violent because of a religion, about 99% of the time, it's a certain religion. I don't have to get a degree in Islamic Studies or anything to want to put a boot to it.

Except it ain't muslims 99% of the time. At the moment, Islam is probably the most violent large religion on earth, but only by a small margin. So what? We gonna boot out all the christians and hindus next?

well we cant very well Just stick the islam's and Muslim extremists in a cage, it'd be downright insensitive not to put all of them in one
because only then will the end of days come about and we see who's god has who's back
seems like a very good science experiment to me

It's been a while since this comic made me laugh out loudly. I did at this strip.

Lonewolfm16:

wasneeplus:

ccdohl:
What's for a xenophobic turd to fail to understand? Some people get murderously violent because of a religion, about 99% of the time, it's a certain religion. I don't have to get a degree in Islamic Studies or anything to want to put a boot to it.

Except it ain't muslims 99% of the time. At the moment, Islam is probably the most violent large religion on earth, but only by a small margin. So what? We gonna boot out all the christians and hindus next?

To be fair both historically and in modern times Hindus have been resonably calm. Historically Christianity has been one of the most violent organizations of all time, mostly due to crusades and inquistions, along with witch burnings and the like. In the modern world however most christians live in first world countries that universally look down on religous bigotry meaning most modern Christians, even the fundementalists, will rarley use physical violence. Islam on the other hand has a history of acceptance and tolerance... and not so much in modern times, where it claims the worlds most violent major religion with a large margin.

Actually...most of Islam isn't violent at all, at least, I've found little support to that suggestion. Middle Eastern Islam is far far worse than most demographics, as far as I can tell, but they make up only a small fraction of Muslims in the world. Out of 1.6 billion Muslims, only 300 million live in the Middle East/Northern Africa, but 1 billion live in Southern Asia/the Philippines.

Don't confuse what the media suggests over actual statistics. Unless you have statistics to show that modern Islam as a whole is the most violent religion/demographic, let alone the most violent by a large margin...It's possible that it's just one section of Islam that is getting all of the media coverage, or just one section of Islam that is murdering innocent people (more than the average demographic).

(You're also forgetting the many modern Christians that are extremely violent in southern Africa, who still burn suspected witches to death and will rape virgins under the false pretense that it will rid them of HIV. Just because Middle Eastern Islam gets more attention doesn't make it more violent)

04whim:
Well that quite instantly is my favourite strip of Critical Miss.
And one of her hallucinations is Kratos, so a god is her imaginary friend too.

Indeed. ^_^

I'm also amused by the lengthy-- ah-- debates going on that seem to be getting further and further from the initial topic...

NotALiberal:

or because they're xenophobic turds looking for any excuse to put the boot in on a religion they don't even begin to understand.

This is politically correct bleeding heart liberalism at it's finest. Islam deserves EVERY single goddamn ounce of hate it gets. Speaking as someone who's family lived under the boot of an Islamic theocracy, where you could be executed for having a Bible in your family home (my family is Christian, and this very nearly happened), I understand Islam more than some bleeding heart liberal who spouts the same politically correct, inane bullshit about how Islam isn't "different from any other religion". Christopher Hitchen's would disagree.

Also, tying Islam to race by your use of the word "xenophobic" is racist in itself. I'm of Middle Eastern descent, yet no one in my immediate and extended family are Muslim.

Shit like this sets me off, when people of privilege who don't have to deal with the absolute misery Islam as a whole still brings to the world (It's not the Middle Ages anymore, so the "BUT OTHER RELIGIONS DID BAD STUFF TOO!!11!" argument doesn't really hold up), get on a moral high horse and condemn us as "bigots" for hating a religion of bigotry and hatred.

Wow, you sure do make some very good points. I've had a sneaking suspicion people were using these threads and those exact same points to make themselves feel better about themselves that they are so much more "tolerant" then everybody else without actually having a bloody clue. I greatly respect your post.

catching up on CM. since it not in the slider any more i miss issues now :/

anyway, OT:

damn Grey, BURN :D, i love it, keep it up