JAPAN NEWS AND DISCUSSION
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1
Why do Japanese change their attitude when they communicate with foreigners?
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Confrontation
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3
U.S. Navy investigating how parts fell off aircraft near Atsugi
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4
California court to decide if SeaWorld whales are illegal 'slaves'
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5
Kuroki reported pregnant 2 weeks after denying relationship with Akanishi
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- Assistant Language Teacher (ALT) in Kanto region
- RCS (RCSコーポレーション), Kanto
- Salary: ¥180,000 ~ ¥250,000 / Month includes performance bonus
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- Assistant Language Teacher - TOKYO - late-March start
- Interac, Tokyo
- Salary: ¥230,000 ~ ¥255,000 / Month
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- Assistant Language Teacher - Kanagawa Prefecture - late-March start
- Interac, Kanagawa
- Salary: ¥230,000 ~ ¥255,000 / Month
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SezWho2
What's your point? He is also a Yemeni citizen, and that, too, seems irrelevant to me. Yemen will obviously not allow him to do as he pleases. If it pleases him to issue fatwas against the Yemeni government, I don't think they will appreciate it. Additionally whether Obama has issued a targeted killing against al-Alwaki scarcely matters. The fatwa will not end with al-Alwaki's death. It will end with its retraction and even that will not end the threat to Norris's life. That threat was real even without the fatwa.
Wishing doesn't make it so, nor does whistling in the dark keep the wolves away. America still has many strengths, but its hold on those strengths is tenuous. It is frittering away its capital, both economic and moral, in the pursuit of two needless wars that are winnable only through mass killing, if then. We are fighting "them" "over there" so we don't have to fight them "here". "Here" we are fighting each other. We do not have solutions to our domestic problems. The war on terror distracts from all that.
Posted in: Seattle cartoonist goes into hiding on FBI advice
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SezWho2
You misread the debate. It is not between the anti-Muslim crowd and the pro-Muslim crowd. It is between the anti-Muslim crowd and the pro-tolerance crowd.
You consistently miscast what I say. What's up with that? For example, I never said that the fatwa against Norris was a simple criminal act as you suggested. I said it was a criminal act. I did not say it was simple.
Far from saying that it was a simple act, I think I rather clearly suggested it was a complex one. I think it is an act of such complexity that in order to take action against it the US needs to be a participant in an international justice system by whose rules it is willing to abide. I cannot imagine which government on earth wishes to support violence or threats of violence against its citizens. There is a clear common interest. However, in order to take advantage of that interest all nations must be willing to submit to the same judgments.
Now I'm sure that the term "submit" is going to send the anti-Muslim crowd into fits of shrieking inanity. However, that is one thing that civilization is--submission. If it hurts your sensitivities that I suggest that American failure to cooperate reduces our options and that the options we select inevitably lead to more hostility against us, I suggest you develop a more calloused approach to discussion.
As for people not buying what I'm selling, so what? There's always you. Your mode of dealing with me is one of complaint. It's very clear that you do not like what I am saying, yet you neither refute it nor substantiate how it is irrelevant. For example you say that my first post with its reference to US invasions came "too soon". What possible criteria do you have for making that assertion? Is it just that people wanted to express their feelings? Do you think everyone should be allowed to express their feelings--or just everyone except me?
I totally agree with Reverend Wright when he says that the chickens are coming home to roost. What America is doing is not good for America. America is in decline and it is taking it out on Islam. Never mind that America has shown great resilience in the past. For example, the great Communist scare came and went (and singlehandedly Stalin was responsible for more deaths in a year than radical Islam has been in the past decade or two or three). How is it that we can accommodate the Communist party, legendarily sworn to overthrow the capitalist system, but cannot accommodate Islam?
About 15% of Americans live below the poverty line, jobs have disappeared and are not coming back in kind, Americans have no confidence in the financial system, the primary and secondary education systems are broken, Senators and Representative of both parties are unwilling to move beyond doctrinaire positions and give us patches where we need reform, Mad Hatters preside over Tea Parties and we are worried about Islam? Talk about folks with their heads in the sand!
So, to return to the question you dodged: I have said that the fatwa against Norris is a criminal act. In my opinion we need to work with the government of Yemen to encourage al-Alwaki to cancel his fatwa. However, we haven't exactly left ourselves many options in dealing with Yemen. So, whether you think this is a criminal act or not what's your solution? invade Yemen? have Americans express their feelings about Muslims? complain about people who dare to suggest that non-Muslims also bear responsibility in the matter?
Posted in: Seattle cartoonist goes into hiding on FBI advice
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SezWho2
OK. Let's not. What's your point? We should invade Yemen?
Posted in: Seattle cartoonist goes into hiding on FBI advice
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SezWho2
Not true unless you are considering only non-state actors.
Posted in: Seattle cartoonist goes into hiding on FBI advice
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SezWho2
I would agree that it's a terrible thing for Norris to have to go into hiding for what she did here. I also think it's a terrible thing for a drug-deal witness to be blown away by some punk who does it as an initiation rite. There are obvious differences in the two in our society. Neither--making a cartoon of the prophet or being a witness to a crime--is in itself a criminal act, but we take it that the former is innocuous and the latter, because of the criminality of the drug deal, is fraught. In other societies witnessing a drug deal is not a crime but caricaturing the prophet is.
Obviously, those other societies should not be calling for assassins. However, to the best of my ability to understand this situation, they are not. The fatwa was issued by a single cleric and one who rather clearly has an axe to grind against America. I hate to get all John Kerry on y'all, but this should be treated as a criminal matter, not as a manifestation of Islam.
I think this might also be a good time to consider whether the US, by holding itself aloof from the international justice system, makes it more difficult to gain international agreement on acts of criminality. This tends to limit US options to sanctions and wars which have such manifestly brutal effects on Muslim populations that it is a little fanciful to expect moderate Islam to lead the parade against extremists from the Islamic faith.
Posted in: Seattle cartoonist goes into hiding on FBI advice
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SezWho2
It doesn't show any such thing. Americans have far more to fear from Americans who have a monochromatic view of Islam than they do from American Muslims.
Americans aren't being asked to treat Muslims without suspicion. Americans are being asked to treat them with tolerance. Please, have all the suspicions you want. Just don't make up that the "ideology" of Islam in Saudi Arabia is the same as the "ideology" of Islam in Iran or Turkey or Malaysia or the US.
Posted in: 9/11 anniversary politicized by mosque, Quran controversies
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SezWho2
I'm having a difficult time trying to figure out which are your ideas and which are your conceptions of my ideas. In any event, I am not saying that Americans (or America) are beacons for the world. America might have been that once, but it is not now.
What I am saying is much more simple. It's not a question of being better or worse. It's a question of what we have voluntarily tasked ourselves with--and that is tolerance of American citizens with various religious. It isn't consistent with our task to contemplate treating some of our citizens with less tolerance on account of what other countries do with their citizens whose religions are closer to our hearts.
Posted in: 9/11 anniversary politicized by mosque, Quran controversies
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SezWho2
There may be a mixed message in that. But I have not said that. In fact, I have said that you can discuss that all you want.
My point was that the discussion of intolerance in Islamic countries for religious preferences of residents not of the Islamic faith is not relevant to a discussion of religious tolerance for Muslims in the US. So, yes, the cultural center issue might be a good opportunity to look at the "bigger picture of intolerance". But why stop with Muslims? There are no reasons other than prejudicial ones to do so if what we really want to do is look at the bigger picture.
Posted in: 9/11 anniversary politicized by mosque, Quran controversies
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SezWho2
I don't know for sure. Do you? What's the answer and why does it matter? It's an area zoned for churches, among other types of structures.
You don't have to make your questions more palatable. You should, however, resist the temptation to make things up. One thing that you have made up is that the person who asks "why at ground zero" is asking a legitimate question. Questions that have false predicates are not legitimate. Another thing you have made up is that I have avoided answering that question. I have already said that I think the site was chosen, among other reasons, for its proximity. When you claim that it is indecent for Muslims to build there, you have made that up. There is no inherent indecency in the location. And if you think that it was chosen to declare an Islamic victory, that's something else you have made up.
Posted in: Fellow Americans' suspicions frustrate U.S. Muslims
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SezWho2
Here's my very simple question....Why misrepresent the truth?
Ground Zero is defined by the point of the attack and by the area which has been set aside to commemorate the events. It is not defined ad hoc by the furthest reaches of recognizable parts from the planes, or of dust from the buildings destroyed or of recombined molecules of people who died there.
Posted in: Fellow Americans' suspicions frustrate U.S. Muslims
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SezWho2
If your goal is to be able to do something that you believe to be offensive to them, why should they be concerned about "earning" your trust? You might as well say that they will not earn your trust unless they allow you to burn the Qur'an.
Posted in: Fellow Americans' suspicions frustrate U.S. Muslims
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SezWho2
Should the focus of the message be large enough to also address the Hindus and the Muslims in India, the Protestants and Catholics in Northern Island, the Tutsi and the Hutus in Rwanda, the Tamils and the Sinhalese in Sri Lanka? Or is it just Muslims living elsewhere that we should talk about when we speak to the American people regarding tolerance?
Yes, if you really want to address the issue of intolerance--intolerance generally and globally--the focus of your message should be larger. However, it need not be larger if you want to address the issue of intolerance in America.
There is no mixed message in telling your tribe or clan that "we do not eat our peas with a knife, never mind that they do over there." There is no mixed message in telling Americans that they must be tolerant of other Americans. The child says, "But, dad, everyone else is doing it!" And the adult says, "I don't care what everyone else does. I care about what you do." There's no mixed message there.
Posted in: 9/11 anniversary politicized by mosque, Quran controversies
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SezWho2
You can point that out all you want, but it is not relevant to the issue of tolerance in America. What would be your argument: they're intolerant so it's OK for us to be intolerant, too? at least we're better than they are? Obama should chide Saudi Arabia?
How would any of that be relevant to what is going on today with respect to the Islamic cultural center?
No, I'm saying all Americans should be tolerant and that they should be so without regard to what the Saudis do. Except militarily, we cannot disallow intolerance among the Saudis.
Posted in: 9/11 anniversary politicized by mosque, Quran controversies
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SezWho2
Actually, yabits is responding to the assertion that mainstream Islam does not denounce extremism. The burden of proof lies with those who make that assertion. Unfortunately for them, they have placed themselves in a position where they have to prove a negative.
So, unless you are willing to make that proof, I'm afraid you're going to have to accept a single instance of Islamic repudiation as evidence that the assertion was wrong. And, in any event, why would you be likely to hear repudiations of extremism? Do you regularly listen to the words of Muslim scholars and clerics?
Posted in: Unsettled nation marks 9/11 with rituals of sorrow
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SezWho2
When you don't know what to say, deny and accuse--not that any of these things respond to the point, mind you. But they at least distract from it.
I don't know where you grew up or when, but it seems to me that you really ought not accuse people of manufacturing experience until you get your facts straight. For my part, I think that anyone who grew up in the Bible Belt in the 50s and 60s must surely know what I am talking about--unless of course they were profoundly asleep during that time. I also think that if you look at America today you can see the growth of megachurches as a political Christian movement that is really an extremist interpretation of textual Christianity. Despite the number of adherents, the message is skewed.
What people in Saudi Arabia do is really not to the point. You are looking there at a single Islamic state and using it as a proxy for all of Islam. It is not. Islamic practices are many and widespread and your attempt to use Saudi Arabia as the defining element of Islam has scarcely more to recommend it than using the Vatican to define Christianity or the Hassidim to define Judaism.
Posted in: 9/11 anniversary politicized by mosque, Quran controversies
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SezWho2
I don't for a moment believe that mainstream Islam has been cowed by extremists, no more--and probably a lot less--than mainstream Protestantism has been cowed by reactionary interpretations of the bible in the US. And, yes, the moderates do denounce the West. And so do plenty of people in the West. But that is because the West has a nasty habit of "defending itself" on Islamic turf and in the best of times visiting draconian regimes upon largely Muslim populations and in the worst of times, visiting sanctions, warfare and death. It is quite disproportionate and it is the lack of proportion that draws the criticism.
I think that would be an imperfect example. The Imam's contemplated action is to build an interfaith cultural center. The Florida furniture salesman's contemplated action is to burn a holy book. There is no question that the Q'uran is sacred to the Muslims. And there is no question that the planned location of the cultural center is not designated as sacred to the memory of 9/11.
Anger against the Imam is totally misplaced. If people believe that site should be sacred, then they should petition the city to make it so. Otherwise, it's just a case of trying to dictate who can and who cannot build there based on who we like at the time. Obama showed no favoritism by refusing to ask the Imam not to proceed with his plans. He showed analytical ability and good sense.
Posted in: Unsettled nation marks 9/11 with rituals of sorrow
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SezWho2
It's quite plain that Americans have always needed guidance in terms of tolerance. I think the American system is better in that demands tolerance. However, what is demanded is not always given. Whether politicians are the right group of people to plea for tolerance is a different question, but I see no reason why they should not.
"Mohammedans"? Have you ever heard a Muslim refer to himself as that? Your semi-slur notwithstanding, it is irrelevant that Muslim tolerance is the exception not the rule. The contention was that Obama should exalt Muslims to tolerance. In the Golden Days of W, much was made of the fact that he was President of the US, not of the world. Ditto Obama. When he addresses Americans, he is addressing all Americans. Do you think he needed a special shout-out to all those erstwhile law-abiding American Muslims?
Posted in: Unsettled nation marks 9/11 with rituals of sorrow
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SezWho2
A lot of Christianites certainly are. If America only knew who it truly should be at war with, it would have a much better chance at achieving a good result.
When Obama addresses the nation and pleas for tolerance, I don't think he is excluding Muslims, is he? It seems to me that Muslims in America have been extremely tolerant. It's not like they ran riot on Glenn Beck when he suggested that Congressman Ellison somehow needed to prove that he wasn't working with "our enemies".
Posted in: Unsettled nation marks 9/11 with rituals of sorrow
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SezWho2
I think that the truth within the truth is that Muslims see those divisions in different ways. I grew up among good Christian folk who spent considerable time pondering if the Jew could be saved and how the US could have a civil society despite the clear-to-them Biblical inferiority of blacks.
I think it would be a really good idea if non-Muslims stopped trying to make a case for the exceptionalism of Islam.
Posted in: 9/11 anniversary politicized by mosque, Quran controversies
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SezWho2
That's a fair point. However, just as preconceptions can be inaccurate, epiphanies may be false.
I think it may be quite true that people are accepting of individual Muslims and that individuals who are expecting prejudicial treatment are surprised to find generosity toward them as individuals. It wouldn't follow that the same generosity extends toward groups or that prejudice doesn't exist among those who show generosity.
Prejudice seeks to draw lines--not with my daughter, not in my neighborhood, not near Ground Zero. It is not so apparent in individual treatment of individuals as it is group treatment of groups who somehow cross the line, whether by design or by mischance.
The "victory mosque" protesters seem to hold that Imam Rauf and his backers have crossed a line by design. I think there was certainly design in the location, but I find the drawing of a line obnoxious. I have little doubt that the reaction would have been much different had the cultural center been planned at a location 4 blocks away or 5.
I think that in this case the line was drawn to exclude a certain group. The exclusion was first. The reasons came later. I don't think Imam Rauf set out to cross any lines by design. I think this comes under the category of mischance. However, it is certainly an affair that tests the true tolerance of Americans and I think that here, where group looks at group, that tolerance is sorely lacking.
Posted in: 9/11 anniversary politicized by mosque, Quran controversies