Thursday, January 24, 2008

Covenant Zone meets every Thursday

7-9 pm, in the atrium of the central branch of the Vancouver Public Library, in front of Blenz Coffee. Look for the blue scarves. Maybe this week we will be discussing the "human rights" scandal. Join us if you can and would like to talk about how we can really protect each other in a free society.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

MORE BARBARIC MUSLIM CHILD ABUSE

Muslim fathers 'encourage' children to flagellate themselves with chains and knives.

An investigation by Cumbria Patriots

"It is illegal, yet the police are not keen to prosecute. (the report I have summarised below was from 2005)

In 2003 a routine doctor's appointment in north London a doctor asked 14-year-old to take off his shirt, he noticed something very worrying. Criss-crossed on the child's back were more than 50 lacerations. The doctor asked for an explanation and was told the boy "had inflicted the wounds himself during a religious ceremony; there was nothing to worry about. The doctor called in the child protection agency.

Through interviewing the family, a joint police and social services investigation team found that the child had made the lacerations by whipping himself with a zanjeer - a long chain with a set of curved knives attached at the end - as part of a flagellation ritual at the Idara-e-Jaaferiya mosque in Tooting, an area of Wandsworth, south London. The ritual, known as "zanjeer zani" or "zanjeer matam", was part of the Shia Muslim festival of Ashura, marked at the mosque every year."

Read the rest of the gory details of this sickening ritual at http://cumbrianpatriotbnp.blogspot.com/2008/01/scars-on-backs-of-young-children-as.html.

Charles Henry said...

Maybe I’m just grumpy from having a really bad day, but I swear I’m starting to get quite fed up with unsolicited links being thrown in to threads like this.

What is their purpose, honestly??

Personally I don’t think that anonymously and unapologetically leaving off-topic comments is the way to win friends to a cause. Is it too much to expect some tact from someone looking to rally troops to their flag?

This comment by anon isn’t someone waking me up to bring me news that my house is on fire, this is more like my cat letting out a loud and needy meow when I walk by in the hopes that I’d bend down and pet her.

I’m sorry, but I’m not going to follow your link, because of how you’ve presented it to me. There’s no indication that you’ve even read the post you’re “commenting” on… or that you might even care who you are talking to. This might as well be computer-generated spam, for all the consideration it places on the blogger as an actual person.

When telemarketers bother me at home with unsolicited sales calls, I don’t care how good your deal sounds, I am hanging up on you. Behavior matters, it makes a difference.

Ask yourself, if you can’t even treat potential allies with respect and courtesy, what hope do you have that your behavior would entice unpersuaded readers with differing opinions over to your point of view…?
Who follows a rude leader?
How likely is it that any rude salesman will make a sale?

You’re choosing to lose.

If this is about winning, there are ways that lead to greater certainty of victory, and there are ways that would lead away from victory.

If this is only about your feeling good about yourself, no matter the effect the behavior may have on the struggle going on around you, then by all means keep spamming blogs.

But if you sincerely want to win, please adopt a more personnable approach to your outreach strategy. There’s a difference between graffitti and conversation… isn’t there?

Thank you.

truepeers said...

I agree Charles; and besides, we all know that there is a problem with some significant part of Islam. Are we to drive each other hysterical about it ad nauseam? When will we get left the serious ideas about how to engage the problem in ways that will positively change the nature of Islamic and Western culture? Do we really believe Islam is immutable? Because admittedly we have a shortage of our own ideas right now. But to the extent we try, it is easy to lose the conversation in a return of the frequent "sky is falling" posts, of which I am at times guilty. Right now most of what we can find in the blogosphere is either Utopian denial or an apocalyptic world view. And there is something about the latter that lends itself to drive-by Cassandras.

Charles Henry said...

it is easy to lose the conversation in a return of the frequent "sky is falling" posts, of which I am at times guilty.

And I'm embarrassed to admit that I've written more than my share as well, to little purpose, except for the short-term release of some built-up anger.

But neither of us goes around spray-painting other blogs with our frustrations. (not after experience earning a living through sales..! There's a way to influence people and there's a way to cause people to dig in their heels...)

It's ironic that a fury arising from what is perceived as an unwelcome presence and an ingratitude to hosts' hospitality, is expressed in uninvited spam comments ignoring the protocols of courtesy of the blogs they are spamming.