Mmh, the BBC article doesn't say why she was arrested, i.e. under what law. Does anyone know more? I can't come up with any reasoning with the sparse facts mentioned in the article.
Teen girl arrested for burning Koran
- Thread starter SaturnVengeance
- Start date
Frankly, I think the world would be better off if all religious books were burned and lost forever.
It was in bold, right underneath the headline.
You're not seriously equating healthy competition with ethnic and religious hatred, are you?
And all of us and the foreigner against the Klingon?
Let me see if I understand this. First of all, religious hatred, or any kind of hatred for that matter, is a thought or a feeling, not an action. Second, “incite” means “to encourage, urge on, stimulate or prompt.” So, in other words, this girl was arrested for thoughtcrime. No, let me correct that -- she was arrested for allegedly causing other people to commit thoughtcrime.
Free country, my ass.
As a point of clarification, I want to be certain that you are aware the incident occurred in West Midlands, England, not Oregon, USA.
Yes, I'm aware of that. But I was under the impression that the English consider themselves a free people.
No state or locality in the U.S., to my knowledge, has a law against inciting religious or racial hatred. Such a law would inevitably be found to violate the First Amendment. Inciting violence -- that's different.
she's a stupid bitch and thought it'd be 'cool'?
Welcome to Britain. A free country which thinks that you don't have a God-given right to be a complete dickhead and say whatever shit you want to stir up trouble.
In fact, we're pretty much of the opinion you don't have any God-given rights at all. We make do with the rights we give each other.
and we're trying to live in a multi-cultural, multi-ethnic country by co-existing peacefully.
burning Korans just isn't cricket, old boy.
I'm sorry, I didn't realise I was talking to an expert on British law.
Perhaps you can direct me to the video of British Muslims burning a bible that went unpunished, as it has clearly outraged you so. I wish to report this shocking injustice to the police.
If people are not free to be dick heads then they are not free at all.
Based on some of what's been said upthread, I'd respond with this:
The difference between the British and the Americans is simple. Neither are truly free and haven't been for some time. The British know they aren't really free but don't care anymore. The Americans would care were they not totally convinced they were free.
The difference between the British and the Americans is simple. Neither are truly free and haven't been for some time. The British know they aren't really free but don't care anymore. The Americans would care were they not totally convinced they were free.
Nardpuncher
Rear Admiral
Hi!
I'm going to check back in on this thread on about page 10 when the battle over religion gets solved by you guys.
Can't wait!
I'm going to check back in on this thread on about page 10 when the battle over religion gets solved by you guys.
Can't wait!
If rights are merely given by people to other people they have no worth at all. The entire idea behind the concept of "rights" is that they are intrinsic, not given (and presumably also withheld or withdrawn) on the whim of certain people or majority vote.
What does this mean? The implication is that the thread is going round and round in a pointless circle and doing nothing of importance. How is this so? People are discussing important issues about tolerance, conflict, freedom, faith, etc, and so far I don't see anything that appears out of line or extremist. What then is your justification for this "I'll check on you later, loveylovey kisskiss" post, mocking the entire exercise?
I would hope this brain dead idiot was charged with starting a fire in a school.
Damn. That's what happens when you never read the sub-headlines.
Ok, doesn't incitement to religious hatred have to be a bit more serious? She posted the video on her own facebook page. That doesn't seem that public to me. Or am I misunderstanding the intent of the law?
Damn. That's what happens when you never read the sub-headlines.
Ok, doesn't incitement to religious hatred have to be a bit more serious? She posted the video on her own facebook page. That doesn't seem that public to me. Or am I misunderstanding the intent of the law?
A bit of background for those who don't live here:
People are going to be angry over the charge because of how long it took to arrest the muslims who paraded around London waving placards saying "those who insult Islam should be beheaded" and "Europe you will come crawling" etc. Due to freedom of speech laws, they were permitted to do this (and did, in numbers). It took a long time before any were charged with inciting hatred. People are going to say "how come when muslims publicly and openly incite violence it's allowed under "freedom of speech" but when this girl burns a Koran she's immediatly hauled off?".
This is why people will be muttering, will be angry at perceived double standards, and why it's more than just one girl burning a book. It's another little snippet of what the government considers acceptable and what it doesn't, where it applies its laws and where it doesn't, when it chooses to take action and when it doesn't. That's what people need to understand here. The issue isn't really "should she have been able to burn that koran?" The issue is far wider than that and this incident will be considered by many to be more evidence for the idea that crimes are based on who did it and to whom rather than what was done. This, as I'm sure you'll imagine, disturbs people.
People are - as usual - too caught up in their power struggles as each bloc works against the other (left vs right, muslim vs secular, native vs immigrant) to understand the overall air of concern; which is about the government, the expansive state apparatus and its control, not about any one of these power blocs. But most people are just engaged in their usual aggressing against the "other side", which is all they really want. That's the problem here; power blocs. Identifying with a group. There should be only individuals and the diverse community; as long as people feel the urge to form blocs and structured group identities there will be intolerance and destructive conflict. It matters not in the least if you're an athiest, a muslim, a christian, an immigrant, a native-born, white, brown, whatever. But when people start forming organized groups and identifying collectively with such a label, the primate instinct takes over and it becomes "us vs them" or, in minority groups particularly, "us vs the world". Insecurity and fear leads then to intolerance, hatred and violence.
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I would have to agree with BDJ, as I suspect the point was not that healthy competition among athletes was bad, but that quite a number of fans do look at their rival teams and fans of their rivals as hated enemies, rather than friendly competitors. And some choose to act on their ridiculously exaggerated feelings.
About six months out of high school, during a Christmas break home and from college, a couple of my classmates and I stopped to have a drink in a bar in a town about half an hour north of where we grew up. We weren't loud or obnoxious- just having a beer. One of the "local" guys (of about our age) sitting at the bar recognized the guy in our group who had played football for our high school and began harassing us. As hard as he tried, however, no one took the bait, and he finally crawled off somewhere (The fact that we ignored him so effectively was what REALLY got his goat).
I never went to a single football game during high school, yet here this idiot wanted to get his buddies to help him kick our asses, just because we were from a school that supported a rival football team. Ho Ho Ho! Merry Christmas!
I don't know- maybe a guy like this would always find an excuse for wanting to pick a fight or hate someone....
Its hard to say whether circumstances caused the hatred or whether the hatred was already there and waiting to emerge.
I can understand why people have this backlash, in Europe in particular. You have these ethnic/cultural/historical groups composing the nations, and they've been that way for an incredibly long time. They never really worried about mass immigration posing any problems until it happened and they had large unassimilated populations. Its alarming to see the long established order of things so dramatically affected.
As an American, we haven't really had that problem. We've been one wave of immigrants after another. Every few decades someone feels inadequate and picks on the others. From the Irish, to the Germans, to the Mexicans. Its a passing thing though, and it lacks popular support.
I think Europe is coming up to a crossroads. The political pendulum usually swings pretty regularly, and the swing to the left might be reversing itself. Lets hope the pendulum doesn't go too far.
I can understand why people have this backlash, in Europe in particular. You have these ethnic/cultural/historical groups composing the nations, and they've been that way for an incredibly long time. They never really worried about mass immigration posing any problems until it happened and they had large unassimilated populations. Its alarming to see the long established order of things so dramatically affected.
As an American, we haven't really had that problem. We've been one wave of immigrants after another. Every few decades someone feels inadequate and picks on the others. From the Irish, to the Germans, to the Mexicans. Its a passing thing though, and it lacks popular support.
I think Europe is coming up to a crossroads. The political pendulum usually swings pretty regularly, and the swing to the left might be reversing itself. Lets hope the pendulum doesn't go too far.
I always saw it like this: America has been largely insulated from the wider world. You have such low population density and such a large country that immigrants were able to settle reasonably comfortably after each wave (after the initial adjustment period). Most importantly, you were an ocean away from everyone else. The long-standing conflicts and struggles never reached you because you were half the world away. But in Europe/Asia/the Middle East there's no getting away. We're all here, packed into the same spaces, rubbing against each other full stop. Ethnic groups galore who all hate one another with long-burning passion. America is only just now beginning to realize it can't truly escape. The USA's repeated adventures in the Middle East these last few decades are a sign of that - you're being dragged back into the ongoing mayhem whether you like it or not. And the attack on New York popped America's bubble of isolated safety and served as a rude awakening that as the world gets smaller you're back in the midst of it all.
I've read about the problems in communities along the American border with Mexico, and it's interesting how the issues and concerns there match much of Europe. But for the USA it's just that one border. Europe on the other hand is nothing but borders. What is regional for America is largely the case everwhere back in "the old world".
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