Can anyone spell tolerance?

[Adora]

Originally Posted by The Jesus Lawyer

It's a distraction. Whether or not you agree with their justice system, there is still no right to be there.

SUBTLE!

Taliban, American...a fundie is a fundie. Murdering self-righteous bastards who love herding the sheep.

"Herding the Sheep"? Is this some new post-Brokeback homophobic slur I have yet to encounter outside the Bible Belt?

[The Jesus Lawyer]

Originally Posted by Adora

"Herding the Sheep"? Is this some new post-Brokeback homophobic slur I have yet to encounter outside the Bible Belt?

Yes.


michael

[Adora]

Good to see we've got a new homophobic asshole to fill the gap left by Abe when he took his paedophillic bullshit and left in a huff.

[The Jesus Lawyer]

Who's homophobic?

michael

[Corona688]

Originally Posted by The Jesus Lawyer

michael

If you're going to end every post with that inane vacuous smile no matter what the tone of the rest of your post is, at least have the courtesy to put it in your sig so people can turn it off. It'll also save you a lot of typing.

[The Jesus Lawyer]

No. How 'bout you stop being so anal?

michael

[Adora]

Originally Posted by The Jesus Lawyer

Who's homophobic?

You

[The Jesus Lawyer]

I'm a fashionista. All my clothes are Italian. I use expensive soaps and old colognes. I use an apricot scrub on my face. I've been like this since before it was cool and metrosexual. Metrosexuality is for fags

Anyhow, I like the girls, but I find it hard being homophobic since they surround me while I shop.

And I work in television for god sakes!

michael

[erimir]

Originally Posted by Adora

"Herding the Sheep"? Is this some new post-Brokeback homophobic slur I have yet to encounter outside the Bible Belt?

The sheep are the religious followers.

I don't see how you could have mistaken that for a homophobic slur, it would make no sense.

He just went with your impression to be an ass and to rile you up.

[The Jesus Lawyer]

and for amusement...you forgot that one

michael

[Adora]

Originally Posted by erimir

I don't see how you could have mistaken that for a homophobic slur, it would make no sense.

Like I said, "post Brokeback-Mountain".

[Godless Dave]

Originally Posted by fragment

Quite likely. Nonetheless I did have some hopes that the support wouldn't be so ingrained as to continue indefinitely under a post-Taliban government, and that the judiciary wouldn't continue to hand out death penalties for religious crimes. Small hope perhaps, but the Taliban were so goddawful that even a run-of-the-mill despicable regime would be an improvement.

I think one of the biggest mistakes we Westerners make is assuming most people in third world countries want some kind of representative government with guaranteed civil rights. Democracy and liberty are mostly middle-class interests.

[fragment]

Originally Posted by Godless Dave

I think one of the biggest mistakes we Westerners make is assuming most people in third world countries want some kind of representative government with guaranteed civil rights. Democracy and liberty are mostly middle-class interests.

If you're implying that my point of view rests on that assumption, please show me how. All I was trying to say was that before the Taliban fundamentalist-style Shariah law didn't have much influence in Aghanistan, and expressed a hope that it hadn't become ingrained in the culture in the fairly short time since it arose.

Assuming anything about the political aspirations and allegiances of third-world countries is likely to be an error. In depth knowledge of the country will be much more useful - not that I'm saying I have that about Afghanistan.

[Godless Dave]

Originally Posted by fragment

All I was trying to say was that before the Taliban fundamentalist-style Shariah law didn't have much influence in Aghanistan, and expressed a hope that it hadn't become ingrained in the culture in the fairly short time since it arose.

No, but traditional tribal customs and mores did. The Taliban didn't take power in a vacuum, they were just more extreme than the intolerant people they replaced.

[fragment]

Originally Posted by Godless Dave

No, but traditional tribal customs and mores did. The Taliban didn't take power in a vacuum, they were just more extreme than the intolerant people they replaced.

I imagine many tribal customs and mores were hardly sweetness and light, but how intolerant were they? Did they execute people for deconverting from Islam, or for homosexuality? Did they massacre minority groups?

Also, in some ways, the Taliban did take power in a vacuum. I'm sure they drew to some extent on tribal traditions as well as fundamentalist Islamic ideology from elsewhere (such as Pakistani madrasses), but they were also a reaction against the warlordism that ravaged Afghanistan following the collpase of the Soviet-supported government.

[Godless Dave]

Originally Posted by fragment

I imagine many tribal customs and mores were hardly sweetness and light, but how intolerant were they? Did they execute people for deconverting from Islam,

I think so

Originally Posted by fragment

or for homosexuality?

definitely. And they killed women for adultery or being the victims of rape, and sometimes beat them up for having their hair uncovered. But this varied among different regions of the country. When the Taliban unifed the country they expanded the worst practices to the whole country and added a few of their own.

Originally Posted by fragment

Did they massacre minority groups?

Depends on your definition of massacre. The warlords killed a lot of civilians in wars with each other and general banditry. But for large-scale ethnic cleansing you need a national government like the Taliban; it's the problem with relying on force and intolerance to establish order.

I haven't read the whole thing, but here's Wikipedia's history of Afghanistan.

[But]

Before the Taliban took power, churches were common and there were lots of Christian converts in Afghanistan. The Taliban did a pretty thorough job of rounding them up and torturing them to get the names of more converts. The churches were destroyed, of course, and the converts killed. Today a big part of the problem is that many of the judges are clerics with no formal training and they couldn't care less about human rights or whatever. The problem doesn't disappear by moving that one guy to another country, as there are currently some couple of thousand (estimated) Christian converts living in secret in Afghanistan.

[fragment]

To be honest Dave, I was hoping that if you were to try to answer those questions definitively you'd have a bit more of a source than a half-read wikipedia article. You may well be right about many of those things, but some actual evidence would be useful. You warn against assuming third-world peoples all want democracy and liberty, which I agree with, but I also think it's an error to assume that all third-world peoples want tyranny and violent bigotry.

[The Jesus Lawyer]

Originally Posted by fragment

You warn against assuming third-world peoples all want democracy and liberty, which I agree with, but I also think it's an error to assume that all third-world peoples want tyranny and violent bigotry.

It doesn't seem to matter what they want really. It's more about what we want and how they pay for it, but that's a whole other story...

michael

[Shake]

According to some reports, being let go wouldn't mean being free of a death sentence. It just would move from an official one to an unofficial, vigilante-type one.

[fragment]

He's been granted asylum in Italy

[erimir]

Originally Posted by Adora

Like I said, "post Brokeback-Mountain".

I get how "herding the sheep" could theoretically be a euphemism for gay sex based on the movie.

However, even granting that, it STILL would not have made sense in the context. You're saying that you read that sentence, and this was the interpretation that made the most sense to you:

"Taliban, American... a fundie is a fundie. Murdering self-righteous bastards who love gay sex"

How in the hell would that ever make sense, as opposed to the more obvious interpretation of "sheep" as a metaphor for religious followers?

[The Jesus Lawyer]

lol

michael

[godfry n. glad]

Originally Posted by fragment

To be honest Dave, I was hoping that if you were to try to answer those questions definitively you'd have a bit more of a source than a half-read wikipedia article. You may well be right about many of those things, but some actual evidence would be useful. You warn against assuming third-world peoples all want democracy and liberty, which I agree with, but I also think it's an error to assume that all third-world peoples want tyranny and violent bigotry.

Well, I'll back up what Dave has been saying. I had a friend who went into Afghanistan as a journalist, while the Soviets were still there. He wrote a book on it. Holy Blood: An Inside View of the Afghan War, 1993, by Paul Overby. Anyway, in conversation with me after his return from his second trip there, he confided that the Russians were the least of their problems. There are, as noted, tribal warlords who control significant portions of the country and tend to align themselves however they wish at any given time. Then there are the ethnic challenges. (Pashtun 37%, Tajik 28%,, Hazara 20%, Uzbek 11%, Aimak 5%, Turkmen 3%, Baloch 2%, other 4% including Sikhs.) It's a mix of Turkic and Persian peoples. I don't know the Islamic demographics, but the central Asian "republics" to the north tend to be primarily Shi'ite, with communities of Sunni, with varying levels of actual observance. Tolerance is not a long suit amongst these people. It's a volatile mix on the order of Yugoslavia. My friend did not have high hopes for Afghanistan....I think he's been pretty much vindicated.

[Adora]

Originally Posted by erimir

How in the hell would that ever make sense, as opposed to the more obvious interpretation of "sheep" as a metaphor for religious followers?

Take a little look at the most common form of slander for men (in power, and in general) through the 20th century.