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No Telstra. Maher and Harris were conflating one thing with another and then breezily coming up with hundreds of millions of people who apparently would represent some existential threat to civilization. Affleck saw the grotesque failure of the logic in this. So did I and a lot of other people as well. It is clear that Maher hates Islam as much as he hates all religions, so no one is going to get a pass from him.
But it is the same fallacy that Grimshaw promotes on this site....that the actions of the merest few hundred or even a few thousands of 1.5 billion adherents to Islam immediately moves them all into the same 'other' realm as all the populations that get targeted by race hate and bigotry.
At one time it was the Jews. Still is the blacks. It can be the Japanese. Or the Chinese. Or Roma. Or homosexuals. Or protestants. Or Catholics. Or Hindus. Or Sikhs. Or Indians. Or communists. World history is just a map of shifting targets for others' fear and loathing. Because when some millions of people start to think that their fear justifies action against their perceived enemies...the result is a human conflagration that resolves nothing as we then move onto our next target.
To be absolutely honest, I don't see what this thread actually does to further the subject beyond all the other threads on this topic that have been started in Hot Topics week after week year after year except to provide spectator sport as Jubbers with differing views battle it out again. We just had Grimshaw's thread on Affleck et al a few days ago. There are at least two or three new threads on ISIS here every week.
It isn't as though for the group of posters left on this forum that we are changing our minds or even looking to change anyone else's. If anything, the endless urse fights over Islam make Hot Topics seems pretty toxic to posters looking to have fun in HT.
But it is the same fallacy that Grimshaw promotes on this site....that the actions of the merest few hundred or even a few thousands of 1.5 billion adherents to Islam immediately moves them all into the same 'other' realm as all the populations that get targeted by race hate and bigotry.
At one time it was the Jews. Still is the blacks. It can be the Japanese. Or the Chinese. Or Roma. Or homosexuals. Or protestants. Or Catholics. Or Hindus. Or Sikhs. Or Indians. Or communists. World history is just a map of shifting targets for others' fear and loathing. Because when some millions of people start to think that their fear justifies action against their perceived enemies...the result is a human conflagration that resolves nothing as we then move onto our next target.
To be absolutely honest, I don't see what this thread actually does to further the subject beyond all the other threads on this topic that have been started in Hot Topics week after week year after year except to provide spectator sport as Jubbers with differing views battle it out again. We just had Grimshaw's thread on Affleck et al a few days ago. There are at least two or three new threads on ISIS here every week.
It isn't as though for the group of posters left on this forum that we are changing our minds or even looking to change anyone else's. If anything, the endless urse fights over Islam make Hot Topics seems pretty toxic to posters looking to have fun in HT.

