Dear moderators of this forum, can you explain me what was the reason to delete the thread here on LingQ? I mean “For all our French LingQ members”. It was very interesting… Of course, there was some higher degree of emotions than usually, but…
Maybe you missed it, but I remember seeing the thread starter mentioning deleting the thread because it was getting too emotional as you say. The original poster usually can delete the thread he or she started without any extra privileges. In this case the OP (not LingQ administrators) thought it was too heated to do any good, so first warned and then deleted it.
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Ok, now I understand. I see Delete button at the top of my own thread.
Just a bit more info: moderators, too, can only delete their own threads. We are here to keep an eye on things, but that’s it!
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I will be glad to re-post (in a separate thread) what I had written, which did not receive any objections but was deleted along with the rest of the thread nonetheless.
Maybe because Mr. Ozzy wanted to exert his power of free speech and see how far he can go until something like this happens. Considering that a person who signs up for this site most likely is an intellectual ( ideally speaking) the etiquette that is becoming for such a person should be respected. What that means is that we should think more than the average person before posting anything so as to create( at least from an artificial point of view) an environment in which we can feel at ease when communicating to each other.
I’m very critical of religious groups in general and while there is a lot to be said about why so many terrorist attacks are committed by Islamists I also find that there is a tendency now to depict muslims as a whole as dangerous, incompatible with Western societies etc. I think this is unfair.
One of my next-door neighbours is a muslim. I’ve known him for 15 years and he is one of the brightest and nicest people I know. I’ve had negative experiences with devout muslims but also many positive ones, the latter being clearly in the majority.
Ever since I decided to study Arabic I’ve tried to talk to as many native speakers as possible. Many - albeit not all - of them are muslims. And not one of them conformed to the stereotypes so often depicted in our media.
I don’t see why ordinary, law-abiding citizens should pay for something they are not responsible for. The Qu’ran has many more passages where muslims are called upon to spread peace and help others than passages that are calling for violence. The Qu’ran itself is not the problem.
I could easily use the Bible to “justify” stoning of people, slavery, the killing of homosexuals etc.
The difference is that we don’t see those things propagated and actually encouraged by official governments in the West anymore. And this is a very important difference which, however, is not the result of religious groups getting their act together on their own (as if Christianity per say were better than Islam or Judaism etc.), but is an achievement we owe to numerous people who paid with their lives for the kind of freedom we now enjoy.
There are still many governments or regimes in the Islamic world where it is common practice to justify and even encourage the violation of human rights based on religious rules. If we are really serious about upholding human rights, we have to question ourselves why our governments and international corporations are only more than willing to cooperate with those very countries that show no respect for human rights whatsoever (just think of Saudi Arabia).
Obviously there are many other interests involved in this, as well. Money, as always, is an important factor and the desire to exert political control over entire regions is another one. The current chaos in the Middle East is not exclusively the result of local political and societal failures but was also brought about by Western military interventions.
If the kind of terrorism we are facing now (and which will probably stay with us for the next few decades) is to subside, we need to change our policies as well. Many terrorist groups were originally funded by the West with very clear “geopolitical” aims in mind. Puppet regimes have been supported by the West for decades. “Western ideals” continue to be sacrificed to political doctrines and thus undermine the credibility of those statesmen calling for more democracy and freedom in the Islamic world.
While Saudi Arabia, a well-known financial and ideological supporter of radical Islamic groups, is being treated like an ally (simply because of its oil deals with the West and probably also as some token of “appreciation” for letting Western troops into the country), ordinary muslim citizens are now too often seen as the big enemy. I’d rather put my life into the hands of my muslim neighbour than into any Western politician (I wouldn’t trust any Saudi official either, of course).
There can never be an excuse for crimes like the ones committed in Paris. Finding an explanation for them is not an easy task either. But putting the blame on almost 1.6 billion followers of a religion is certainly not the right way. Besides, as long as we financially and politically support and cooperate with countries that have no problem interpreting the Qu’ran in a way that constitutes the basis for such outrageous crimes, we won’t be very credible with our criticism in countries where people have suffered for too long under those regimes.
Invading countries, thus destabilizing an entire region and leaving behind total chaos doesn’t do much good either.
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@Madaran It’s like the pot calling the kettle black.
In my opinion this site is in no way connected to religion, so why bring it here in the first place. We can accept other cultures and other languages, but religions should stay in their proper places. This site is meant for linguists, language learners, teachers/tutors, and polyglots. We, every member of Lingq or most of us, don’t want to interconnect two things, language learning and religion, to cause large scale warfare between one another. This is why I wish that any future threads containing any religious terminology or words be deleted for the sake of our language community.
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Actually, that is one policy I try to stick to with my language exchange partners. Somehow religion always seems to be a tricky topic. While one should be able to talk about anything in a civilized manner, personally I also prefer to leave out religion in my language learning exchanges and so far this has worked really fine.
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In all honesty the thing you request is meaningless. If you have an acute intolerance towards religion that doesn’t mean that we all have to avoid this subject for your own comfort. Just as we were talking in that thread that was deleted freedom of speech does exist and even if we have different views on how we should express it, talking about religion without any fanatic or over subjective nuance shouldn’t present any problem.
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Who are you and what have you done to Ozzy? 
Lively debates, too, are useful for language learning, but I fully agree that we all may have learnt a lesson through this particular case. On the other hand, I am not fully in favour of your last sentence. Self-monitoring may the better option. At home we had a rule for family meals: money, religion and politics were taboo subjects. (This usually worked until the alcohol began to talk.)
Robert’s policy of avoiding religion as a topic seems to be a good one tp apply to forum threads.
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I see that you still enjoy writing novel-like posts. Basically almost everything you said hit the mark. I was thinking that maybe if the Palestinians were still the owners of their own land, the Arab countries wouldn’t have been divided as to fit the desires of the Western rulers and also if we had the right to have leaders that really cared for us we wouldn’t have to face this kind of heinous attacks.
We must realize that if a group of people is pushed to their limits and beyond there’s bound to be a minority of them you would commit acts that will make them transgress. Or maybe there are others who want to do something bad that will result in hatred in the hearts of those who are observing this group.
It’s pretty reasonable to say that the Saudis don’t care to much about the rights of people, I mean for example why to they treat people who were not born there as third-rate citizens? I must mention that the reason that they act so badly isn’t because of religion. The Saudi family and their regime can’t be called Islamic because of a long array of reasons which would require a lot of time to explain. But I believe that they pretend to act upon the Qur’an just to fool as many of their neighbors so as to gain there support.
I also see many times people who blame us for not stopping extremists but the question that arises is how do we identify them by the rest of our brethren? Also in all due honesty these kinds of people in reality can’t trace their behaviour to any of the verses of the Qur’an or any authentic hadith.
We all see what the so called “Islamic State” is doing and my question is why didn’t they form that international coalition against Bashar who killed more than 500.000 people? But they don’t care what others may go through but only their interests should be satisfied no matter the cost.
Could you please show me where exactly in my post I am “requesting” anything? I am talking about what I do and what I think is best for me. I never asked anybody to “avoid this subject for my own comfort”. Would you please care to read the posts of other members of this site more carefully before making any insinuations.
And, just out of curiosity, where do you see any indication of my “acute intolerance towards religion” as you put it? You are clearly putting words in my mouth.
I said I was “very critical of religious groups”. The inability of certain people to see the difference between criticism and intolerance or “attacks” (on a religion, its prophet etc.) may very well be one of the root causes of this conflict.
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And why didn’t the Arab states form a coalition against Bashar? When the West does something it’s bad, when it doesn’t it’s bad too.
What do Arabs/muslims do for their so-called brothers in Palestine or Syria? Except burning cars in their country and spilling hatred on the internet? Instead of crying against Western countries on a computer you should go help the Free Syrian Army or whatever.
The sad thing is, the only people who went there to defend their cause are the islamists.
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I’m not too happy to admit this but you are right( except maybe with your comment regarding burning cars and hatred on the internet). But let me tell you this: the reason for why the other Arab countries didn’t help is to set an example for what might happen if the people go against their leadership. But that doesn’t mean that the Western governments are guilt-free.
I mentioned this before, the fact that Obama could’ve inforced a no fly zone above Syria which would’ve allowed the free army to defeat Bashar in no time at all. Instead they’ve been sending inspectors for years without any avail but once it came about IS they didn’t need too much time to form a coalition against them.
The sad thing is that no matter how many times we complain and comment we are too insignificant compared to the ones who rule us.
“The sad thing is that no matter how many times we complain and comment we are too insignificant compared to the ones who rule us.” - Madara
You are right. Most or all of our western politicians don’t care for the people that elected them into their current positions. They just give us false promises, and lie to our faces with an angelic smile, and we elect them. The U.S. fought against tyranny once before, and we would gladly do so once again.
Well, I don’t know if people only burn cars in French suburbs or if it happens elsewhere. They don’t only do it for Gaza though, but also at New Year’s Eve or when an Arab country wins a football match. Must be a token of love.
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Well said. Fighting against tyranny sounds reasonable but this can only happen if the US government has something to gain out of it(financially speaking).
What we ordinary people can do is to enhance and encourage communication between ourselves and especially between people with different cultural and religious backgrounds. Just like how literature can’t usually exist without antagonism so does the real world that doesn’t cater for those who benefit from wars,court trials and other kinds of conflict.
I started following the thread that got deleted. It looked like a good read and I planned to write a thing or two. I was disappointed when I couldn’t find it again since I think I missed most of the discussion that led to the thread being deleted.
I think you misunderstood, I wrote this comment for Ozzy.