To hell with this stupid brainwashed propaganda!
Menantol, I really do wish you'd think for yourself sometimes rather than just swallowing the propaganda you've been fed by the political right.
You know, the right-wing is just as robotic and incapable of thought as the left.
Just one of the many reasons I dislike BOTH extremes.
Now French aka Warner has made nine PROVABLY FALSE statements.
If it comes to that, I spent a lot of time some while back pointing OUT those errors of FACT.
Some of which I might add I can tell you from PERSONAL EXPERIENCE and DIRECT KNOWLEDGE are FALSE.
If it comes to that, I DID tell you that quite a while back.
You're beginning to sound like a mirror image of someone we both know from another forum who is just incapable of accepting when they are wrong.
Please don't turn into someone like that!
Just accept that French/Warner is (you take your choice of the ONLY possible options) a) a fool; b) a gullible person who simply recycles what other fools and/or liars tell him; c) a conscious liar.
Those really ARE the ONLY possible explanations of the facts that he posts PROVABLY FALSE statements and pretends they are true
Big Lin, I don’t believe that anyone is trying to wiggle out of anything.
Obviously we disagree about Dr. Bill Warner and our reasons are varied. Even so asserting a position by the use of words sourced in organizations and people well-known to be bias and hate driven does nothing to establish a fact based position. The sources you have provided (in particular the Southern Poverty Law Center) are well known to lie and twist words into attacking those who are their targets. In fact, they are well known to do the very things of which you accuse Dr. Bill Warner which then, in my opinion, places yourself knowingly in the same position of what you accuse Dr. Warner of being.
That you dislike him is quite clear, at best it appears that you find him distasteful. But that is your problem (or blessing) and not mine. After all is said and done, I still maintain, even without Dr. Bill Warner, that the philosophical foundations of the West, as compared to the philosophical foundations of Islam, are not compatible. Like you I make that assertion from both study and personal experience. That we have reached quite different conclusions is also quite apparent and facts can possibly move such conclusions, but I do not see evidence of that in this case.
Your pejorative descriptions of we who do not find Dr. Bill Warner lacking in any substantive position actually weakens your position. Using descriptors such as ‘authoritarians’ and referring to me personally with “ . . . Menantol, I really do wish you'd think for yourself sometimes rather than just swallowing the propaganda you've been fed by the political right. . . “ or your asserting, “ . . . Why don't you stop singling out just one for your condemnation? . . . It's boring; it shows selective indignation; and it's demonising an entire group of people in exactly the same way Hitler did. . . . “ this doesn’t assist any dialog.
Then turning this exchange into a political dialog with such as, “ . . . . The conservative agenda is to steal the people's freedom by any means possible and scapegoats are a tried and tested method of doing so. The Nazis did it with the Jews and the conservatives are doing the same trick with Muslims. . . . . “ does nothing for the dialog here and your trying to turn this on Conservatives is an old propaganda trick to transfer focus, besides being not correct.
You also say, “ . . . My primary point is and remains that talking of an Islamic-based culture is as nonsensical and naive as talking of a Christian-based or Jewish-based culture. . . . “ is simply not supported by the historic facts.
You offered, “ . . . My Turkish brother-in-law is getting very tired of having to try to justify his existence to prejudiced Islamophobes. . . . “ may have substantive meaning to you but it means nothing here, at least to me, and referring to people as having prejudiced Islamophobia is just another of the pejorative descriptions meant to silence people by using descriptive terms and really don’t apply and are not true.
Saying, “ . . . has everyone been mysteriously hypnotised into an inability to reason, judge and take an interest in the wider world . . . “ is just another pejorative terminology meant to cut off dialog. And then with, “ . . . I've reached the conclusion that to those whose brains are warped by prejudice no amount of facts and reason will stop them believing their comforting propaganda no matter how false it is. . . . “ is rife with more terms to cut out dialog.
Big Lin, my point is, that no matter what you intend in your own mind, the impression is that you do not want an exchange of dialog but rather simply want all to simply agree with you or to be quiet. You have in the past decried some past accusations of some others who referred to you as an apologist for Islam and you disavowed any truth in such an accusation. However, from my perspective reading these past postings, if you are not an apologist for Islam, you certainly make a good impression of one.
I suggest that others here are just as capable as you looking into current facts and history. That others here also have personal experience with Islam. However, something you do not ‘seem’ to have is some appreciation for Western values as you have often denigrated Western institutions and thought, in particular the Roman Catholic Church. Nor do you seem to have any penchant accepting the positive nature of Western thought relative to other cultural foundations, in this case, Islam. Such as, free will being a necessity to Western thought and an anathema to Islamic thought.
My impression is that you have no real interest in this dialog and would like to see it simply go away, well, you have the power to do that anytime you want to do so.