Crusades: Good or Bad?

[Bereta_Eder]

I don't think it's fear of getting shot. Black people are still feared and hated by a lot of people, and the police shoot them a lot, and they still riot from time to time.

I have minimal experience with Muslims, but lots with Arabs, since I spent about ten years going to an Arab Christian church. The Antiochian (Arab) archdiocese has always been much more willing than others to assimilate and welcome converts. Back when Greeks and Russians were holding services all in their respective languages and giving the stink-eye to curious WASPs who showed up on Sundays, the Antiochians were welcoming in something like three thousand converts from evangelicalism en masse. I think it's because, even before 9/11, Arabs were widely regarded as hopelessly foreign, wrong and weird in a way Greeks and even Russians were not. They didn't want to be different; they wanted to be ordinary, happy, prosperous Americans.

Maybe they were given the stink -eye becasue the practise of changing ones religion is alien. It is so much interwinded with culture that, well it becomes hard.
The only exception is marriage. There only a change of religion is considered... necessairy (always talking about the religious folks here).
Of ocurse that would also hold water for the arba christians? so I don't know what's going on.

[Bereta_Eder]

Oh.
Now that I read again what you wrote, I get it.

But about chaning ones religion. You can be a bad christian a good christian a non practising christian, an atheist.... christian but you're awlays a christian :/
Abandoning your religion means abandoning your country which means abandoning your "bloodline" which means you stop being you and are worse than an alien. At least he didn't do it, he was born that way so it's ok.

That's the dominant theory and the source of many evils.
It steams from a time where the notion of nationality was blurred in the balkans.
Either you were a christian or a muslim.
Then it broke down to various other conotations like roman (=greek) bulgar, serb etc

So you can be against the church with all your might you're at worse a problem child, a soul misled to be saved or a commie .
You change your religion, then you're really unsavably screwed, there's something fundamentaly wrong with you and definitely not one of "us".

That's why the muslim minority in the NE of greece or the catholic minorities in rhodes are so important. They help break that thinking.

[Bereta_Eder]

I suspect every country does something similar in hard times. Whenever things go wrong, the first question is "where did we go wrong?" You look back to an earlier time in history when things were okay, and note what changed since. "Obviously" the solution is to turn back the clock, so things will be as simple as we imagine they used to be before that point of departure. This is not rational, but I think it's more or less human nature to do it. It makes superficial sense, and it's extremely flattering to one's cultural pride.

But that happened even with more fierse way when Greece was really wealthy. I mean in a time when our health care system surpassed that of the UK, when unemployment was 7% when the army contracts (unfortuantely) made the aegean look like it was made of metal.

In that book it is supposed that west's liberalism and muslim fundamentalism stems from the same theocratical wombs and are both a top down imposition of ethics. Whereas "our" model celebrates indivbindual liberty as a means of achieving fulfillment in societal solidarity and outside a structured and imposed form in contrast with the "west" and "islam".


Sounded like ehtnosicalism to me, a ethnopopulist socialist approach, fundamentaly antiliberal and backwards and un-free.

Again if confined in ecclesiastical matters it might hold water, but the way it was supposed to expand to everything, to create an all encompassing cosmotheory seemed fake. made of clay feet. unfounded. and VERY divisive.

[giblets]

Your interpretation of Christianity seems to be the opposite of what the parable about the good samaritan is intended to convey.

[Bereta_Eder]

It's not my inteprpatation, it's the approach of a niche group.

[Bereta_Eder]

They are probably too afraid to riot. Take a look at this thread, https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/c...did_your_life/ , rioting Muslims would probably get shot dead by Evangelical Protestants. European Muslims are more like African Americans, stuck in a vicious circle of mutual distrust and aggression with The Man.

Exactly.

Being a muslim in US now is like being a jew in nazi germany (before the final solution). Maybe having a long beard has the same effect. Dunno.
Suddendly your name is no longer aaron but chris.

And yes in Europe there are a lot of parameters. It's not jsut that they are muslims.

They are north africans. Their countries were colonized and exploited. They are pissed at that.
Meanwhile they have double citizenship.
Anyway, it's very complicated there. Really, no easy answer.
europeans are not anti-muslim per se (some of them) and muslim naturalized youngs are, well, a bit angry (some of them).

[Imran Siddiqui]

Being a muslim in US now is like being a jew in nazi germany (before the final solution).

Uhh.... no. Definitely not.

[Bereta_Eder]

Glad to know then

[Elok]

The only Muslims I've met recently are the people who run the Indo-Pak ethnic grocery, but they don't seem terrified or anything. No bars on the store windows to protect from a kristallnacht, the young lady wears a hijab openly, and they appear to have a wide customer base; like many ethnic groceries, they have little nooks for various tribes other than their own. A Jamaican section, various latin things, etc. And a Jamaican food truck permanently parked in the lot. To all appearances they're happy, prosperous, and not remotely afraid of being rounded up and gassed.

I'm drinking a masala tea I bought there as I type this. They also stock cardamon tea, a lovely flavor I never knew existed. And chile-coated strawberry gummies from Mexico. Down the street from the Indo-Pak is a hole-in-the-wall taco stand I hear is really good. For the most selfish of reasons, let me just say, God bless our immigrants.

[Sava]

No bars on the store windows to protect from a kristallnacht,

making light of hate crimes

YOU FUCKING PIECE OF SHIT

[Elok]

. . .

I like puppies? Can you get offended at that somehow?

[Aeson]

You say you like puppies, but what about kittens?!? You don't like kittens! RACIST!

[PLATO]

You say you like puppies, but what about kittens?!? You don't like kittens! RACIST!

Maybe he just has Ailurophobia. That would make you a discriminator against the disabled!

[Elok]

Puppies grow into dogs, which are sometimes sent to attack peaceful protesters, and are prominently used by the military. And both dogs and puppies are known to eat endangered lizards, then hork up their precious endangered lizard parts all over the doorstep.

I'm a monster.

[Alexander's Horse]

I always wanted to go on a Crusade, yeah baby!