Hijab target for race hate crime

[monkeytrousers]

But surely racists wouldn't stop targeting Muslim women simply because they stop wearing the hijab?

link

[piffle]

it's a sign of how ridiculous the whole targetting of Muslims is
Traditional western militants/extremists are almost always male and 20-30 yrs old if what one reads int he papers is correct. I know Palestinians have started to use the occasional woman as have the Iraqi insurgents but not over here at all as yet.
I was at Meadowhall last weekend and there are a lot of muslim women, some in full face covered burqa and some in a simpel veil, some with no headress at all. It ruined a few of my preconceptions (I digress horribly) well I stood aside to let a fully face covered lady and her un head dressed friend through the one wide entrance door and was so shocked to hear the lass in the burqa having an expletive rich rant about some young lad who had wronged her in the night club the other night!!!! I had always assumed women in full burqa, submissive and meek and silent!
I also saw her later standing in the ice cream queue and was dead curious to see how someone in full veil would eat an icecream.
And people who wear the veil do so out of religious devotion, it's not a sign of a fundamentalist...
But here I am in planet leftwing utopia

[piffle]

and the bombers do everything possible to fit in with the mainstream, esp in the case of the london bombs...
I mean targetting people for their religion makes us no better than the bombers...

[monkeytrousers]

lol! I'd be interested in seeing that too, Piffle.

[Blu]

Exactly Piffle - a hoodie saying 'New york' isn't exactly indicative of someone with a murderous hatred of all things Western, is it??

[peachskin]

The bombers do not bomb because they hate all things Western. I too hate many aspects of "Westernisation" or "West-toxication" as one intellectual has labelled the negative impact of Westernisation on the developing world, however, I do not blow myself up for that belief !

They bomb because they have been brain-washed totally and utterly that "martydom" is the ultimate sign of a true Muslim (which in fact it isn't) and because they believe that the only way they can oppose their "oppressors" (i.e Bush, Blair, et al) is by blowing themselves up and taking a few other dead with them "in the name of Islam". This is a total corruption of Islamic teaching. In fact the concept of "Jihad" is to be used in the "defence" of Islam - i.e. if you are an Islamic country and your country is invaded by a Non-Islamic country and so your land is pillaged, your women raped, your Mosques burned down, etc, then a Jihad may be declared by your Muslim leaders so that you can defend your land, possesions, family, etc. against the "infidel" invader.

An Iraqi "insurgent" MAY BE justified in his actions to defend his land and family against countries that have invaded his country without any proper justification and against International Law, but an Asian 18 year old who blows himself up together with many innocent UK commuters, has very little justification either in religious terms or on any other ground for that matter, whether political or otherwise.

[monkeytrousers]

Hi Peachskin

Thanks for you comments.

"An Iraqi "insurgent" MAY BE justified in his actions to defend his land and family against countries that have invaded his country without any proper justification and against International Law"

But what of when insurgents turn on the Iraqi's a they are doing - as in the most terrible recent example, a crowd of children receiving sweets?

[piffle]

But in their eyes these people whether children or not are collaborators as they were taking sweets of US soldiers,
War gives people very skewed ideals, and when you're in that state of jihad under invasion, anything goes, butchery, barbarity, I wonder if at the end of this the list of iraqis killed by insurgents will outnumber the amount killed by the invading troops, whether by design or accident.
Actually you can ask the same about the US troops...

[peachskin]

I do not seek to justify the brutal killing of children by any side. The fact remains that those children are dying BECAUSE the USA and Britain invaded Iraq.

Yes, you are going to tell me that Saddam killed his own people, bla..bla..bla..The question is where is the justification for invading Iraq ? Why not invade China, North Korea or any other dictatorship ?

International Law, put very simply, has in fact banned the use of force unless it is in self-defence. We now know why Blair went on about "15 minutes". He was trying to justify the invasion of Iraq on the basis of self-defence. There was no 15 minute threat or any other direct threat to the USA or Britain from Sadddam. The invasion was and is therefore illegal.

International Law does not allow countries to unilaterally invade another country simply for "regime change". Those of us with an understanding of ME politics and appreciation of the balance of power within the UN, were fully aware of the fact that Saddam had no weapons of mass destruction and that Iraq was simply invaded because Mr Bush and his Neo-Con paymasters wanted to get rid of Saddam (finished off what Bush Senior had begun) and in order to divert attention away from the real threat, Mr Bin Laden.

What the invasion of Iraq has done is to increase the incidence of terrorist acts (again this was predicted by those of us who know the region well) and to totally undermine the UN. Mr Bush and Mr Blair have managed to do this single handedly, and have quite stupidly played into the hands of the real terrorist, Mr Bin Laden, who now has more power and support than ever before.

So we have two religious lunatics (Blair has recently converted to Catholicism and claims to be a devote Christian and Bush has his entire cabinet "say a prayer" before each meeting) against another relgious lunatic - Bin Laden.

[monkeytrousers]

I agree Peachy! We're on the same page, as they say in the US!

[fuzzywuzzy]

Rules of Jihaad are very clear. Children, women, all non-combatants, trees and crops are all off limits.....

Jihaad actually literally means struggle, not war.....

[monkeytrousers]

This is what I mean Fuzzy, I can understand one 'insurgent' as in resistance fighter - we celebrate them in our own history and with good cause (only not now when we happen to be on the other side) but there seems no distinction between this kind of insurgent and the terrorist insurgent who targets mostly Iraqi's.

[Tinker]

Has Blair become a Catholic?

[Blu]

[Kelly1978]

he has taken communion, is expected to convert but maintained he wouldn't while he was pm. britain never has had a catholic pm.

[Tinker]

Quite Blu

[peachskin]

Blu - true.

The same is true of Muslims. Going to a Mosque every Friday and even believing the right to "Jihad" does not make any Muslim a lunatic.

My personal belief is that going to war in the name of God, Christ, Allah, Mohammed, Moses, etc does make you lunatic. Hence my inclusion of Bush and Blair. Both have made references to their Christian faiths in their fight against terrorism.

[ChaCha]

In reply to original msg posted by MT:

If they stopped wearing hijab how would they know that they were Muslim? Skin colour? Hair colour? Clothes?
If I wore the hijab and took it off you wouldn't even guess that I was a Muslim!
I think it's ridiculous anyway..the media really have an agenda on all of this. They are creating so much fear.

[monkeytrousers]

It's not just the hijab, though, is it? Where does it stop? Do we all have to dress exactly the same with no cultura; influences in case we come across a racist? Women are an easy target, as per.

[emily05]

peachskin - what an excellent post. totally agree with everything that you said

[peachskin]

emily - I am glad we click

[Blu]

Peachyskin - I agree that going to (illegal) war under the righteous banner of religion is nauseating.