"I Had One of Them Muslims In the Back of My Popemobile Once..."

My 'God' people are dumb.

Benedict said "I quote" twice to stress the words were not his

vs.

"We ask the Pope to apologise to the Muslim nation for insulting its religion, its Prophet and its beliefs."

HE SAID THEY WEREN'T HIS WORDS! Don't tell me that the highest clerics not only don't understand humor (ok, those Danish cartoons weren't that funny), they don't even understand the concept of quoting?

What clerics? It's usually just some git who's gone around saying, "Listen to me... I'm important, honest... I know all about the Koran, me..."

Speaking in Germany, the Pope quoted a 14th Century Christian emperor who said Muhammad had brought the world only "evil and inhuman" things.

while catholicism has brought ... anyone? an aids pandemic in africa? er ...

Unfortunately it doesn't explain the relevance of the quote or intentions behind it so there may be objection on that basis.

sorry.

okay, perhaps "brought about" isn't 100% semantically correct. but i don't give a fuck, to be frank.

You really think they listen to the church when choosing not to wear a condom but not when choosing to have sex with someone who's not their spouse?

That wouldn't have happened had you worn a condom, so the church was right after all!

tell you what. you go away and do some reading. and some thinking. start here:

http://www.monbiot.com/archives/1999/10/07/the-pope-spreads-aids/

x-post: roffle!

i have to go out now; here endeth the lesson :)

There are lots of reasons for the spread of aids; ignorance, poverty shitty governents. The catholic church is way way down the list. But, what the hell, it's an easy pat answer with all the right liberal credentials so you go on believing it. Bye.

Oh and old Ratsnicker should just shut the fuck up about this one.

Still, fuck 'em all, the backwards superstitious cunts.

LOLz at the idea that Catholicism is in favour of reason

Much of which we only have because it got trasmitted into Arabic and back during the medieval period. The medieval church might have had some Aristotle but the only Plato it had was, as I recall, the Timesis, which is not the book I'd recommend starting with.

but you're SUPPOSED to do it sneakily behind closed doors, and not get caught.

good point, well made.

http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/42091000/jpg/_42091934_effigy_ap_416.jpg

"Boss I need the morning off, gotta burn an effigy of the Pope".
"Hang on I prepared a few last year should this very situation arise".

and entirely unrelated to that - any Catholic complaining about how another faith spreads itself through violence is the height of hypocrisy. The Catholic Church wrote the book on the use of violence to expand the faith, forced conversion, and religious genocide.

And the Pope could start giving out Papal indulgences.

BBC

There's 122 million of them in Africa alone!

no, i was rather meaning - as i took NV to mean, perhaps wrongly - religious leaders and soi-disant spokesmen. but hey.

anyway, bidfurd, i won't waste any more of your time; i imagine you've got some seed to go and spill somewhere.

* The 57-nation Organisation of the Islamic Conference said it regretted the Pope's remarks

Oh, deja vu. Can anyone shed some light on how this supposed worldwide Muslim outrage erupts in the media occasionally over seemingly trivial things, and is virtually silent the rest of the time? Do Western newspapers have a list of angry Muslim spokespeople they phone round for quotes whenever anyone mentions Mohammed? And are there radical Muslims scattered about the Muslim world who go about instigating photographable outbursts of rage?

I absolutely cannot believe that there are hundreds of thousands of Muslims willing to hold protests about this kind of thing, and not about, for example, the war in Lebanon.

Things like the photo of the Indian Muslims burning an effigy of the Pope just fill me with suspicion. Where do photos like that come from? Does the BBC buy them from individual photographers (and if so, for how much?), or does some group of Muslims decide to burn an effigy of the Pope and phone up the press in advance to make sure they catch it?

Whose interest is it in that Muslims have this media portrayal as constantly outraged and offended? It seems like a few people go around whipping up anger, and the media just escalate it and create a 'crisis' out of next to nothing.

I think you will find that hundreds of thousands of Muslims protested about the war in Lebanon, hundred of thousands more than protested over the Danish cartoons

well, my immediate response would be that it wasn't just muslims who protested about lebanon. i mean, there was a whole heap of geopolitical horror going on there. whereas this is being taken as a more specific slight. i imagine many muslims are upset because of the perceived insulting of the prophet.

The "hostile" remarks drew a demand for an apology from a top religious official in Turkey

this confused me. "why?" i thought. "what's he done?"

(thank you very much, you've been a wonderful audience etc.)

Um, yes! That is one of the more plausible theories about why Latino girls get pregnant so often while equally promiscuous girls in America don't. Their Roman Catholicism's emphasis on birth control (or lack of) is going to have different consequences than a Baptist girl who has sex at seventeen but doesn't believe birth control is a sin. People are penny wise, pound stupid all of the time.

So you must believe that Catholic girls are really dumb.

I'm sure it's clear by now that most Catholics aren't particularly devout, and that even among devout Catholics, the prohibition of birth control is mostly disregarded.

Was this widely reported at the time, by the way? I missed it, if it was.
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/66C40F25-F870-4981-A722-83C87FE12134.htm

On a far smaller scale, this seems to give an example of how a story of Muslim anger was entirely media-created:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eat-the-press/2006/08/21/the-scandalous-tale-of-ka_e_27689.html

I wouldn't be totally surprised if journalists present at the Pope's speech started drafting their 'Muslim anger' reports before any Muslims even had a chance to get angry.

I am really struggling to get to grips with what is going on here though, how much is irresponsible media reporting, how much is Muslim anger over wider issues of foreign policy and Western Islamophobia that has been tapped into (and perhaps narrowly interpreted by the media), and how much is genuine anger among Muslims specifically about this Pope's speech.

http://www.altmuslim.com/print.php?id=1767_0_25_0_C

Oft-cited British polls showing minorities of Muslims sometimes justifying violence against civilians or sympathising with the objectives of the 7/7 bombers leave out some important caveats - that only slightly fewer non-Muslims agree with the violence (7% vs. 10%) and that the bomber's objectives, as possibly understood by a Muslim poll responder, might include the withdrawal of UK troops from Iraq and ending the occupation of Palestine - both points on which a majority of Britons agree.

This is about British Muslim opinion rather than worldwide, but the principle is the same, ie I would be very skeptical about how the results of these polls are spun.

How could any context could ameliorate the moral horridness of suicide bombing? How does saying "well, look what they're doing to us" justify committing counter-atrocities? Don't they have philosophy 101 over there?

Here's Benny's conclusion:

"In the Western world it is widely held that only positivistic reason and the forms of philosophy based on it are universally valid. Yet the world's profoundly religious cultures see this exclusion of the divine from the universality of reason as an attack on their most profound convictions. A reason which is deaf to the divine and which relegates religion into the realm of subcultures is incapable of entering into the dialogue of cultures."

as for this:

Don't they have philosophy 101 over there?

reassure me this is a joke. please.

And it does compare with the Danish Cartoon Affair. Those came out in September of '05, but the controversy didn't take off until 5-6 months later, after a group of Danish imams (the not-moderate kind) failed to get the Danish govt to censor or punish the publishers and so shopped the pix around the Ummah, hey presto, riots. So yeah, these things don't just happen, and it's not just Western media drumming things up.

This is similar to the Danish cartoon thing; those came out in September of '05 but the controversy didn't kick off until February of the next year, after Danish imams failed to get the Danish govt to censor or punish the publishers and shopped the pix around the Muslim world, hey presto, protests, and then the French mag republished them, and people rioted. So these things don't just happen, and it's not just western media drumming things up.

The pope delivered a theology/history lecture to a closed audience and quoted a desperate Byzantine. This doesn't qualify as offensive or even controversial, let alone "sticking his papal oar in." Exactly how his statements were moved from that context to the current one is a story I'd like to know.

ah, here it is:

as for catholics/birth control: christ, dudes, it's not quite as simple as thinking: "ooh, i'm about to get my oats ... now, what did the priest tell us about this?" if you're an educated westerner with plenty of access to other points of view etc, you're more likely to form an "enlightened" viewpoint than if you're dirt-poor and living in a village with no clean water, and just have a vague idea of some nutter yelling about condoms every so often.

like i say: the libido conquers all.

anyway, i'm sorry my glib comment has managed to derail the thread. the only reason i hate and loathe the catholic church more than other religious bodies is that i was part of it for 15 years, so it's kinda personal :)

In conditions like that the church's encouragment to stick in monogamous relationships is probably the best advice you could give. Perhaps Monbiot might like to investigate how many lives had been saved because of it.

I stuck the church for 18 years then decided I didn't believe it any more and we parted ways. Unlike you though there were no hard feelings.

American conservative religious groups' antipathy to contraception and exerting pressure over the aim and content of aid packages might mean something here. I guess beggars can't be choosers tho.

A Turkish lawmaker said the pontiff would go down in history "in the same category as leaders such as Hitler and Mussolini" for his words.

Anyone who thinks people say "we can't use condoms coz the pope sez so" AND SAYS "let's all fuck each other to death even though the pope sez not to" AT THE SAME FUCKING TIME is wasting their time even trying to present an argument.

There's a million and one things you can throw at the Catholic church and I'd back you up on most of them but causing an AIDS pandemic? Bullshit.

Oh, and nice backtrack on the "no I don't mean those 122 million poor starving african backwards superstitious cunts, I meant the other backwards superstitious cunts"

I too find it hard to believe that the Pope and his advisors had no inkling that his speech would be "mis"interpreted.

-- Oh No It's Dadaismus! (dadaismu...), September 15th, 2006 12:49 PM. (Dada) (later)

Dada otm here. If Christians really truly believe everything they're supposed to then they have a *duty* to tell everyone else they're wrong.

http://www.dup.org.uk/Images/IanPaisley.gif

call me naive, but i didn't realise taking silly pot-shots at corrupt and archaic religious institutions would actually upset or offend anyone on ILX, of all places. however, you live and learn, eh?

How else are you going to discuss that topic if you can't mention all sides of the debate?

No, this pope dude is way more intelligent than all of us together, having been the big cheese at the royal academy for the doctrine of teh faith and shit. Unfortunately, he's also been locked up in the Vatican for ages, far away from the real world and the media. He _could_ have known people were going to do this, but he clearly didn't expect it.

well, when you, and a billion or so others, believe you're god's representative on earth, and that you're protected by a special forcefield of infallibility, do you really think you give a flying fuck about interpretation or perception? i mean, if you KNOW YOU'RE RIGHT, because god told you, why would you bother?

(xxpost)

http://sparky.thehold.net/pix/060911WDYLL.jpg

KIDDING ABOUT UR RELIGION

why i'm bothering, i do not know. on a personal level, i feel bad if any individual people have been offended by anything i've said. and that's my final word on the matter.

older men directing

twas ever thus

http://img.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2006/06/princephilip030606_600x450.jpg

Hey you're right. Time to change that doctrine.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papal_infallibility

...in 1923 when Hitler joined with Erich Ludendorff in the abortive "beer-hall putsch in Munich, Rober Murphy, who was the American vice-counsul, consulted the papal legate Monsignor Pacelli about the significance of the incident and was assured by the legate that Hitler would never be heard from again.

In 1944, when Robert Murphy who was an advisor to General Mark Clark called on Pacelli, who was by then Pope Pius XII in the newly liberated Rome, he recalled those words. This was the Pope's reply:

"Bob", he said patting Murphy on the knee, "that was before I was infallible".

Quoted from the American Heritage History of WW II, circa 1960

True, Monsieur White. But that doesn't aid one's understanding much. Prior to becoming doctrine, it was tradition. The shift from there to doctrine was not a very long leap.

er, yes: swearing in capitals (which is usually my trick), taking a comment for which i'd already apologised twice far too seriously and accusing me of being thick/intolerant/etc ... little things like that do suggest more than just "actually, no, i disagree and here's why". certainly, my response upon reading your response was that i'd somehow offended you to yr mortal soul.

and, you know, it wasn't actually a theological argument. it was a throwaway comment. a bit like the pope's :)

this whole thing makes me want to weep, it really does (the speech row, not this thread, although it's a close-run thing).

If you're going to use words like thick and intolerant when making a flawed argument don't be surprised when they get bounced back.

suggest more than just "actually, no, i disagree and here's why"

Why should I use softly softly crap like that when no one else on here does? You may not have spotted this but many people on here, including yourself, tend to use "fuck right off cuntybaws" as an opening gambit in any debate, whether offended, angry or chilled the fuck out.

that said, the bottom line is that i find the whole notion of the pope appealing to "reason" and "rationality" hypocritical and sickening. and if you're going to point to one tenet of the catholic faith as being utterly unreasonable and devoid of any rationality whatsoever, then the whole "condoms are immoral" thing (not to mention the line about them being "full of tiny holes" or even "laced with HIV") is as good a place as any to start.

still, note to self: no more throwaway comments!

http://d.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/ap/20060915/capt.sri10209151139.india_kashmir_pope_protest_sri102.jpg?x=380&y=223&sig=flBoNc44uru5ghgeiLwa.w--

http://www.dn.se/content/1/c6/57/29/85/kashmirarg445.jpg

???

http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/42097000/jpg/_42097462_popecastel_2032_ap.jpg

"Ach, who knew?!"

from bbc:

Italian nun shot dead in Somalia

Gunmen have shot dead an elderly Italian nun and her bodyguard in the Somali capital Mogadishu.

The attackers shot the nun three times in the back at a children's hospital in the south of the city, before fleeing the scene.

It is unclear if the shooting is connected with strong criticism by a radical Somali cleric about the Pope's recent comments on Islam.

The nun, who has not been named, is believed to be in her seventies.

The nun was taken into surgery in the Austrian-funded SOS Hospital, in Huriwa district, but she died from her injuries.

A fluent Somali speaker, the nun was one of the longest-serving foreign members of the Catholic Church in Somalia, a former Italian colony.

A Vatican spokesman said the killing was "a horrible act" which he hoped would remain isolated.

Yusuf Mohamed Siad, security chief for the Union of Islamic courts (UIC) which controls Mogadishu, said two people had been arrested.

Muslim anger

Pope Benedict XVI inflamed many Muslim communities last week after making comments during a speech in Bavaria.

He quoted a 14th Century Christian emperor as saying the Prophet Muhammad brought the world only evil and inhuman things.

The Pope has since apologised in person, saying his remarks were misunderstood and did not express in any way his personal opinion.

On Friday, hardline cleric Sheikh Abubakar Hassan Malin told worshippers at his mosque to hunt down and kill whoever offended the Prophet Mohammed.

There has been no effective central government in Somalia since 1991, and although the UIC is credited with bringing some stability to Mogadishu, correspondents say the city is far too dangerous for all but the bravest aid workers to operate in.

It made me laugh.

...

Sheikh Abubakar Hassan Malin told worshippers at his mosque to hunt down and kill whoever offended the Prophet Mohammed.

yes, because nuns are normally getting caps busted in their asses all over the joint, aren't they?

this is all profoundly awful. fuck.

Religion has that effect.

Cultural vanity/elitism redux.

"you're more likely to form a westernized liberal secular bourgeois viewpoint than if you're dirt poor and living in a village with no clean water"

Irony: lost on the God-fearing.

coming from the poster who came out with the immortal "don't they have philosophy 101 over there?", such arguments are kinda laughable. but if you really believe that there's something "culturally elitist" about believing that a broad, "liberal" (in every sense of the word) education system is more likely to bring about an informed viewpoint, then ... well, words fail me.

it's not cultural elitism, it's common sense. or would you rather half the world was kept in poverty and ignorance just to make you feel better?

Too bad liberal secular bourgeious aren't big into procreation. They'll be outbred into irrelevance in a handful of decades.

my god, your prognosis for humankind is bleak, isn't it? care to back up this sweeping statement with some figures?

which then depends on your definition of innocent.

i don't subscribe to this view myself, i am merely suggesting, that from that point of view, the refutation of a religion as evil, and the brutal attacks that follow, are not necessarily inconsistent

and actually: we're probably irrelevant right now as it is, aren't we? i mean, we've got religious nutters in the white house and downing street. so maybe squirrel police is right and the problem is i'm too proud to accept my own irrelevancy :(

i'm actually getting to the stage where i have zero tolerance for religious belief of any kind. i hate myself for that, but right now it's hard to feel any other way.

http://www.dn.se/content/1/c6/57/29/85/kashmirarg445.jpg

http://img.ircimages.com/ircimages/8/e/8e762d6f43df8cd9d349826378d426ab.jpg

"What? You can't close your mouth?"

"Do you like soft drugs?"

The elder son of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi has called on Pope Benedict XVI to convert to Islam immediately, dismissing last week's apology from the pontiff for offending Muslims.

http://www.news24.com/News24/World/News/0,,2-10-1462_2000964,00.html

Nabisco OTM. I read his talk and am still somewhat baffled as to what function the quote really played in his overall argument.

The bastard, I want royalties.

This time "angry palestinians", burn down the door of an empty church in Gaza and open fire, and yet 'No casualties or damage were reported in the incidents'

A lot of people on this thread seems very ready to jump onto the whole 'Muslims react with mindless violence to being called violent' angle that the media is handing us on a plate. A bit of critical media analysis is surely in order here?

These current protests are of course manufactured nonsense -- look at the pics above -- but that's because the extremists are increasingly media-savvy. Signs are always in English, for a start.

It seems incredibly irresposible of the BBC and other media to just reprint these images accompanied by one line quotes from a handful Muslims (most of which they have undoubtedly phoned round to ask for), and pronounce worldwide Muslim anger. It is perpetuating the idea of a clash of civilisations, playing into the hands of extremists and warmongers both in the Muslim world and in the West.

the fact remains: there are enough mad bastards being mad/shooting nuns etc to make this quite a big story, no?

there is also a worrying lack of platform being given to moderate Muslims

er: we had the muslim council of the UK on p1 the other day saying: "yo pope, yr apology has clarified things and we're happy." again, quite a big platform.

you say "the media" are making generalisations ... aren't you doing the same? :)

Why don't Christians bomb Islamic churches when Islamic clerics dis our religion?

(Yeah, I know it happens once in a blue moon)

US Bombs Fallujah Mosque; More Than 40 Worshippers Killed
Revolutionary violence engulfs Iraq
by Bassem Mroue and Abdul-Qader Saadi

Needs more hair.

and it all has the democratic seal of approval, at the voting booths

they don't have to say it explicitly, but they are using a pretty powerful image to give weight to the idea that Muslims around the world are going crazy with rage at the Pope. this is not a helpful idea to promulgate, and it's very irresponsible if it isn't strictly true. if, for example, there were highly staged and relatively small demonstrations, organised by militant islamists, as opposed to more representative, less organised mass demonstrations, it is the media's responsibilty to investigate and report that. as it is, I think frenzy-fuelling has won out over responsible journalism.

the fact remains: there are enough mad bastards being mad/shooting nuns etc to make this quite a big story, no?

I'm not saying the media should ignore what is happening so as not to inflame religious tensions. but they should be reporting who exactly these mad bastards are, who is organising them, and how the broader muslim population feels about their actions.

er: we had the muslim council of the UK on p1 the other day saying: "yo pope, yr apology has clarified things and we're happy." again, quite a big platform.

good. there should be more of this, more Muslims, particularly non-Western ones, should be given a platform in the media, and not just in the midst of a big controversy like this.

you say "the media" are making generalisations ... aren't you doing the same? :)

I don't like referring to 'the media' as a monolith, but over the last few days I have just been reading various newspaper websites and the BBC site, and it has all just merged into the same uncritical hysteria. I rely entirely on the media for my information. I don't have the resources at my disposal to go and find out what is really happening, and the BBC and other big media organisations do, and its their job and their responsibility to be as honest, unbiased and critical as possible. and it's incredibly frustrating to me that they don't seem to be doing that.

-- TOMBOT (tombo...), September 19th, 2006 6:18 PM.

I'll be checking your flickr later - don't let me down.

Perhaps, and they are indeed catchall words, but they have some value or they wouldn't have existed for so long. The Muslim world is a very good way of expressing in English, btw, the Islamic expression Dar al-Islam.

so, i mean, he's being taken out of context in the sense that i don't think a lot of the aggrieved parties have probably taken the trouble to tackle the context. but otoh, the context itself would be plenty objectionable to yr average believer in another creed. his call for dialogue between cultures on the basis of "reason" sounds good, until you figure out that what he means by "reason" is "something that christians have and muslims don't."

A reason which is deaf to the divine and which relegates religion into the realm of subcultures is incapable of entering into the dialogue of cultures.

"you'll never win the war without ME"

If this was Sunday's paper with the "Pope says sorry but will it be enough?" headline then the Dr Muhammed Abdul Bari from the Muslim council said "For the restoration of good ties between Muslims and the Vatican, we feel it's important that he repudiates the views of the emperor. What we want to see is a clear indication that he himself does not in any way share the emperor's bigoted assessment of the prophet Muhammed." - that to me doesn't read as "apology accepted" in any way, shape or form, though I agree it is good to see more moderate language on the issue.

The same article rounded off with The Sword of Islam saying "If the pope does not go on television and apologise for the offensive comments, we will bomb the churches of Gaza."

Guess which quote I remembered and which one I had to look up :-)

...

ok, THAT was a joke.

If this was Sunday's paper with the "Pope says sorry but will it be enough?" headline

no, it was the daily paper, cols seven and eight ... can't remember the day, though. sorry. and you'll note that i didn't actually say "apology accepted"; i don't think anyone's said that, principally because it's not really an "apology" and there's not much to accept!

but it was certainly an example of what cathy said didn't appear to be happening: the moderate muslim viewpoint being given major exposure in the "western" media. and it's not just us doing that.

they don't have to say it explicitly, but they are using a pretty powerful image to give weight to the idea that Muslims around the world are going crazy with rage at the Pope ... I'm not saying the media should ignore what is happening so as not to inflame religious tensions. but they should be reporting who exactly these mad bastards are, who is organising them, and how the broader muslim population feels about their actions

1) i've not been following the BBC's coverage so i can't say whether or not they said "muslims around the world are going crazy" or not. i'd be interested to know exactly how the picture was captioned. without having seen the page on the day it was published, it's a bit difficult for me to argue, so i'll take you at your word.

2) "who exactly these mad bastards are" ... woah, you think hacks should have been stopping them in the street and getting their names and addresses? it's not quite that simple, is it? sure, by this stage in the game, it's possible to start finding out more, but when those pictures were taken the whole thing was spectacularly volatile. i think it's enough that the pictures were taken; that the report at that time basically stated: "in city x, y number of people took part in violent protests".

facts first: and the facts, like them or not, involved a certain number of furious protests. if those facts were being blown out of all proportion by certain parts of the media ... well, that's nothing new. complain to the organisation in question - or vote with your feet and don't read it in future! there are still plenty of rational and thoughtful news sources out there.

id hardly call mossad, bushco and the CIA 'tiny nobodies'...right?

the photographs that appeared were of seemingly organised protests, it shouldn't have been hard to find out who organised them. all the news reports I read entirely skipped over the question of numbers of protestors. the BBC was using phrases like "Indian Muslims staged protests" - totally vague and giving no indication of the numbers involved. I keep seeing the news story I linked to above about the attacks in Gaza repeated just as "Palestinians shoot up six churches in Gaza", omitted the "no injury or damage was reported in any of the incidents" part. the term "violent protests" that kept being used in itself is hugely ambiguous: who was violent, the protestors or the police? and was there violence against people or just violent rhetoric and damage to property? these questions just weren't being asked.

facts first: and the facts, like them or not, involved a certain number of furious protests. if those facts were being blown out of all proportion by certain parts of the media ... well, that's nothing new. complain to the organisation in question - or vote with your feet and don't read it in future! there are still plenty of rational and thoughtful news sources out there.

if you don't like the news - you don't have to read it! brilliant. I might complain to the BBC or other individual news stories, but that's little comfort - I'm not just a pissed off consumer, this is actually about a massive threat to world peace. East-West and Muslim-Christian confrontation pose a gigantic threat to our frighteningly militarised world. the western media play a hugely important role in all this. responsible media could ease tensions by helping educate the west about Islam and the complex grievances Muslims have against the West. irresponsible media can continue to inflame tensions and give even more substance to the so often heard claims by Muslims that the west is anti-Islam.

No one can deny that there are some violent and murderous people out there, seeking to terrorise others not of their beliefs, and they are the ones saying they are of a particular religion. If that religion does not work with the people trying to stop this, then it is natural that the media will take that out of context and thus label them along with those they have not publicly isolated themselves.

eh? i didn't say that. stop putting words in my mouth! i said that if you don't like a particular source, eg the bbc, don't keep going back to it. might i suggest you read the independent? or the guardian (see below)?

I keep seeing the news story I linked to above about the attacks in Gaza repeated just as "Palestinians shoot up six churches in Gaza", omitted the "no injury or damage was reported in any of the incidents"

well, without being funny: if an article doesn't say "and x people were hurt", you can kinda assume 0 people were hurt, no? not entirely sure about "no damage" if something's been shot at, either.

like it or not, these are stories worth reporting. granted, from what you're saying the BBC does appear to be making a bit of an arse of it. but what would you like it to say? "BUT DONT'T WORRY, EVERYBODY, MOST MUSLIMS ARE NICE?" at the end of every story?

for instance, today the guardian's wrap roundup thing tells us:

There is uneasy coverage of John Reid's address to a group of Muslims
in Leyton, east London, yesterday. The home secretary was heckled by
Abu Izzadeen, who is currently under investigation for allegedly
discussing assassinating Tony Blair.

"How dare you come here to a Muslim area after you have arrested
Muslims?" Mr Izzadeen shouted.

specific reporting of the facts; utterly chilling that people think like this, but this is ONE PERSON BEING QUOTED. so you can't possibly complain.

can you stop tarring everything with the same brush, please? like i say, complain to the BBC and then STOP READING IT.

responsible media could ease tensions by helping educate the west about Islam and the complex grievances Muslims have against the West

er, yes. and it has been doing so. where else have i got my understanding of the situation if not from the media i read and watch? media about which, i should add, i am very selective.

there are an awful lot of spectacularly violent and unpleasant people out there. there is an awful lot of appalling journalism out there. such, sadly, is life.

LOLZ @ undergraduate

http://www.alex-hartmann.net/lj/2006/160906_protest.jpg