The Tumblr blog Muslims Wearing Things was launched as a reaction to former NPR analyst Juan Willams saying he gets nervous when he sees people in Muslim garb on planes. Looking through the pictures of the things Muslims wear, I was reminded of a neat bit of casting I knew about but had forgotten.
Then there's reality.
Link -via Metafilter
Prince Abdullah (now King Abdullah II) of Jordan, wearing a Starfleet uniform in a 1996 episode of Star Trek: Voyager.
Then there's reality.
US Army Specialist and Muslim Kareem Rashad Sultan Khan wore camouflage, up until the day he was killed in combat in Iraq, fighting for his country.
Link -via Metafilter
I'm not sure what to think of the whole Juan Williams thing...I liked him when he was a program host on NPR, but ever since he began "palling around" with the likes of O'Reilly, Hannity, Beck and the rest of the Teabaggers on Fox...I say good riddance to Juan.
He tried to play both sides of the fence. Now he is on the Fox payroll...follow the money.
Bill
US Army Specialist and Muslim Kareem Rashad Sultan Khan, I'd just like to say thank you for your service to YOUR country..
Just like the small subset of crazies do NOT represent ALL muslims, neither do the FEW celebrates that have integrated themselves way more then most into western civilization.
That is all.
do muslims need to integrate into western society? last time i checked that they are free to do whatever the heck they want.
...
i remember when busta rhymes came out with the song "arab money" with t-pain and akon and people got really upset
i was like "what?? t-pain, akon, and busta rhymes are all muslim..."
also who cares that song rules.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcuAw77J8_Y&ob=av3e
Let me put something in context for you.
Racism is when one hates another, or group of others, based on their ethnicity. It is narrowly defined and should be narrowly defined.
What Juan Williams said is not only a sentiment most feel, but it was honest and he was expressing his feeling of shame over the fact that he harbors those fears.
Fear is not racism. Neither is disagreeing with one's political agenda. Neither is wanting to stop illegal immigration.
There are real racists in the world. All we do is marginalize the damage they can do by throwing the term around at people who do not deserve to be labeled as such.
Juan Williams is a liberal. He is unapologetic for it. His "palling" around with Fox News does not make him a fake liberal either. Fox News, which has an admittedly right lean on their punditry makes pretty strong efforts to bring opposing points of view on to their shows. The same cannot be said for MSNBC and their other competitors.
NPR had every right to fire Williams. They are a private enterprise and they should be allowed to do whatever they want for their business. That said, they screwed the pooch pretty badly by firing Williams. They've gone to show just how intolerant they are, they've polarized the nation to the degree that many liberals are even denouncing their move...and finally they will likely lose their federal funding (which they shouldn't be getting anyway, but only amounts to 1.5ish% of their budget).
Williams, on the other hand, has come out of this with buzz, support and even a pretty hefty paycheck.
Let's try putting our big-boy thinking caps on and not allow political motives cloud the subject.
Finally, Williams was not making derogatory or hateful statements about Muslims. He was expressing a feeling. A feeling that many, if not most, have had at some point or another. He just admitted it.
ppl seem to forget the very basics our country was founded upon... we used to be proud of our melting pot.
All the hate against Muslims is just as bad as the hate the terrorists have....
I fail to see where vonskippy was 'express[ing] outrage at the fact that the majority of muslims have not properly "intergrated"'.
S/he was merely stating that while extremist Muslims do not represent all Muslims, neither do Muslims who have integrated themselves into Western culture.
I think I would be nevrous sitting next to a guy in a Star Trek outfit or military fatigues on a plane.
Miss C, did you have no examples of Muslim women to show us?
http://muslimswearingthings.tumblr.com/post/1389040713/first-muslim-woman-in-space-anousheh-ansari-is
2. There is no wave of Muslim hatred in America. Yes, there is concern, but hatred? The number of violent incidents directed at Muslims in the USA is so insignificant at to be a blip. Don't believe me? Find some on the evening news if you can because if they were happening we'd know it.
Western Civilization? I'd be hard pressed to believe you know what Western Civilization is let alone judge how well other people are pulling it off.
Being a "good Muslim" doesn't mean wearing Western clothes. The idea isn't just to point out that there are "good Muslims" who wear Chino pants. The idea is that there is no "Muslim Look" so you can't decide one person is a "threat" based on how they're dressed. Who is to say all of these folks are "good Muslims"?? They're just representing the diversity in image of the religion, not a diversity in ideology.
Wow.. 'gee queue' leaves a lengthy and reasonable response and you choose one insignificant line to respond to with a pithy retort?!
How about you read the history of NPR and learn that other than public funding to create NPR in the 1970's, it was started by a coalition of 90 or so for-profit radio stations and has never been "Public" and is not owned in any way by American citizens.
Maybe you should realize what "NPR" stands for
That is part of the problem. People are under the impression that NPR is a non-profit organization funded by the government. It is neither. It receives a very small chunk of its budget from the government.
It is a for-profit private enterprise.
Just like the US Chamber of Commerce is NOT government. The Federal Reserve Bank is NOT government.
I think the idea that we have to qualify every statement which is directed at the segment of the Muslim population that is the problem is dumb.
The left loves throwing hateful and divisive commentary at radical right wing religious nutjobs but they don't qualify their statements...mainly because we all understand that they are talking about the Westboro Baptist Church folks, not the rest of them.
Let's quit being disingenuous and try to pick knits and start having an honest discourse about subjects.
Williams never made a statement saying he could identify all Muslims because of their garb. He was saying that when he gets on a flight and sees Muslims in Muslim garb (let's not pretend we don't know what that is), he gets nervous.
I think it is disgusting how people are so willing to paint someone as a racist.
Frankly, so far terrorists go out of their way to avoid being noticed, so they try to dress like everyone else. The 9/11 hijackers tried to dress like yuppies.
It isn't the people dressed as Muslims you have to fear, it's everyone else. :)
Why are his comments any different than those we hear about peoples reactions to seeing the CONFEDERATE flag displayed or the OFFICIALLY ACKNOWLEDGED and condoned suspiscion of MILITIA members or the comments that TEA PARTY members are racist and violent?
This is a villification of Juan Williams for expressing himself and not obeying and adhering to the tenets of Political Correctness.
Being a not-for-profit organization and not making a profit don't exactly go hand and hand anymore.
Seriously, Google is your friend. It might lead you to a well respected engineering magazine with a long history of accuracy and in depth reporting. That magazine went through Loose Change argument by argument and debunked them all.
There are numerous arguments made by the Loose Change guys that can be defeated without an engineering degree and by using the hundreds of videos and thousands of photographs available on the internet.
It would seem we should hold a funeral for a little thing called critical thinking.
I went to the article, and found it objectionable for its vitriol. It didn't seem as much of a positive site as it seemed a "nyah-nyah, so there" site, while completely sidestepping the original point.
I found Jerse's comments funny. I remember a long time ago on this site Jerse's intolerant comments towards a specific group. I also remember working with an intelligent young Muslim who claimed Sept 11 was a Jewish conspiracy. I think we all have our biases, and being PC about just one type is very dangerous.
All Americans are hated and treated badly. Hate speech is standard.
Men and women do not wear western clothes.
Don't be hateful but don't be naive either.
See it with you own eyes.
When a friend tells you he was bitten by a koala as a child, so everytime he sees koalas now, he gets nervous and fearful, do you scold him for assuming all koalas would bite him? Maybe you show him some compassion and ask him to share more?
Juan Williams wasn't being a jerk, he was being human. He was punished for being honest about his fears. Way to teach the kids what we really think of honesty.
Any decent and sensitive Muslim will understand Juan's feelings and will not hold them against him or America.
NPR long ago became a misnomer.