Current music:	Bye, Bye Miss American Pie
Entry tags:	religion

Not even Jack Bauer could prevent this wank.
Thanks to the mouse on wank report for this one.

24's sixth season's plot revolves around Jack Bauer trying to stop a group of Islamic extremists from detonating something nasty on U.S. soil. (Spoilers for season six abound.) Fans in the LJ comm twenty_four find an article about American Muslims' reactions to same. Wank ensues. Duh.

My first thought was, "Phooey. Srs bizness. D:" For I'd been hoping for some funny in a fandom I actually understand, and much of the commentary seemed either unfunny or disappointingly sane.

Then I found this thread.

No wank is complete without a detailed compare-and-contrast of Christianity and Islam, as partly_bouncy understands:

partly_bouncy: If Christians were being portrayed as terrorists, and the only portrayal of Christians was as terrorists, or as people asked to speak out against terrorists amongst their group, would you be telling Christians to get over themselves?

conservative67: Yes as a matter of fact I would

Leading to this Meno-worthy exchange:

jryc174: ok if our enemies are muslims, then muslims are our enemies... yeah....

schupo: A square is a rectangle, but a rectangle is not a square.

jryc174: yeah but this completely different

if our enemies are muslims, then obviously muslims are our enemies.

ok you're right, muslims aren't our enemies.

then how can our enemies be muslims?!?!?!?!?

virus_x remains unimpressed.

virus_x: Your example is both PUERILE and STUPID. In this country, when people claim their Christian and do things like commit crimes (shoot doctors, burn abortion clinics), what happens to them? Don't know?

THEY'RE PROSECUTED.

(Muslims aren't, apparently.) virus_x also delivers the razor-like finishing move of "[y]ou sound as stupid as Rosie O'Doughnuts." hoshi_reed, who perhaps doesn't understand that that was the finishing move, produces a colorfully faulty, if sadly unprofane, response.

Bonus: There's a second post on the very same subject. This time, instead of debating about whether or not we should compare Christianity and Islam, we can debate about whether or not we should compare Islamic extremists and the Ku Klux Klan.

scotch3554: why do people always bring up Oklahoma City? People like that are an abberation. 1 out of millions. The muslim fundamentalists are by no means the same thing. It's a community and culture of death and violence. The 2 simply do not compare.

I agree there are muslims who do speak out against terrorism and they are to be commended. But there are others... organizations like CIAR who just spend time bringing stupid arguments like the one in this article. They downplay this issues be saying it's only a small percentage of muslims. But even half of 1% of i think there are a billion muslims in the world... close to that... half of 1% of a billion is still 5 million people... that's a hell of a lot of people.

birdseyeview: What about the Ku Klux Klan? What about those people who bomb black churches? What about people who kill abortion doctors? What about Christian suicide cults like Waco and Jonestown? What about the IRA?

thumper: The KKK and the bombers of black churches (generally one and the same, incidentally...) -- Pursued and prosecuted.
Murderers of abortion doctors (and those who bombed abortion clinics) like Eric Rudolph -- Pursued and prosecuted.
And the vast majority of people who consider themselves Christian repudiate those aberrations, which do not do their acts of terror and violence with the imprimateur of Christianity.

Small, but it has its attractions. Watch for the icons in this wank. The icons make it, especially when conservative67 and schupo go head to head. Also schupo and jryc174: there's just something about seeing Dumbledore abutting a dramatically backlit crucifixion all the way through the thread.