Can someone in the Irving TX area "draft" this young man?

[wireties]

Originally Posted by Lil' Lavery

Those articles weren't calling Irving Islamaphobic.

Hey - you posted them in a response to a request for evidence Irving was racially and/or culturally biased. Check the mirror.

Originally Posted by Lil' Lavery

And unless you're prepared to get into a PM debate regarding the treatment of women by other faiths, spare me your Islamaphobia regarding women's rights.

I am fully prepared and you will not fair well. So now I am Islamaphobic? Is this your modus operandi - every person who disagrees with you is -ist or -phobic. Wow.

[Madison]

(and before you ask why they did it there was a sharia court operating in the town)

Originally Posted by Lil' Lavery

http://www.politifact.com/texas/stat...s-first-shari/

http://www.snopes.com/politics/religion/shariatexas.asp

It's pretty clear that Sean provided those links to demonstrate that your assertion that there was a sharia court operating in Irving was not true.

[wireties]

Originally Posted by Madison

It's pretty clear that Sean provided those links to demonstrate that your assertion that there was a sharia court operating in Irving was not true.

A community-promoted arbitration mechanism, enforced by the a local cultural hierarchy, might as well be a court. It certainly can be to the young women trapped in the mechanisms. I refer you to the article I linked above.

[Lil' Lavery]

Originally Posted by wireties

Hey - you posted them in a response to a request for evidence Irving was racially and/or culturally biased. Check the mirror.

Madison already posted the relevant portion. I posted two fact-checking sites in response to your comment regarding the presence of a Sharia Court in Irving, even without stripping it down to the barest portion of the quote as Madison did, the context should be obvious enough.

Originally Posted by wireties

I am fully prepared and you will not fair well. So now I am Islamaphobic? Is this your modus operandi - every person who disagrees with you is -ist or -phobic. Wow.

From now on, I suggest we take it to PMs. This is obvious not constructive. However, since you have accused this of being my "modus operandi" (and I would think you would have seen that elsewhere if that was my modus operandi), I feel the need to make this response public.

Your comment espoused a targeted negative stereotype only related to this thread's subject by the narrowest of tangents. That stereotype was, by your own admission, based out of ignorance ("I don't know much about Sharia law"). That comment was Islamaphobic.

You and I seem to have a fundamental disconnect regarding Islamaphobia and racial prejudices. Stating an action is Islamaphobic is not an attack on someone's character. Stating that our culture is prejudiced against Muslims in a fashion that led to the detainment and suspension of Ahmed is not an attack on the individuals who detained and suspended Ahmed. What it's doing is identifying an action that is based on ignorance or misunderstandings. It's attempting to correct a negative behavior. It doesn't mean that you're a bad person, simply that a mistake has been committed. Given the cultural prejudices in play here, it's important that incidents like these not be allowed to perpetuate, but rather be brought up. It's why it's important to raise Ahmed up as a symbol. If you wish to discuss women's rights in Islam, we can do so via PM rather than drag this thread further off course.

[wireties]

Originally Posted by Lil' Lavery

Your comment espoused a targeted negative stereotype only related to this thread's subject by the narrowest of tangents. That stereotype was, by your own admission, based out of ignorance ("I don't know much about Sharia law"). That comment was Islamaphobic.

You took this this thread down this road. The "tangent" is directly relevant. You started out accusing persons, schools, organizations and townships of "racial injustice". I may not "know much about Sharia law" but I know more than you. How much time have you spent in places where sharia is the law?

I am not Islamaphobic and I never have been. Just because you state something, in ignorance, does not make it true.

[Lil' Lavery]

Originally Posted by Lil' Lavery

You and I seem to have a fundamental disconnect regarding Islamaphobia and racial prejudices. Stating an action is Islamaphobic is not an attack on someone's character. Stating that our culture is prejudiced against Muslims in a fashion that led to the detainment and suspension of Ahmed is not an attack on the individuals who detained and suspended Ahmed. What it's doing is identifying an action that is based on ignorance or misunderstandings. It's attempting to correct a negative behavior. It doesn't mean that you're a bad person, simply that a mistake has been committed. Given the cultural prejudices in play here, it's important that incidents like these not be allowed to perpetuate, but rather be brought up. It's why it's important to raise Ahmed up as a symbol. If you wish to discuss women's rights in Islam, we can do so via PM rather than drag this thread further off course.

Since this needs to be reinforced.

[wireties]

Originally Posted by Lil' Lavery

Since this needs to be reinforced.

The young persons following this thread need to know that casting wide nets alleging horrible -ist and -phobic things is unacceptable. There is no shortage of fact-ridden scenarios to make worthy points. This Ahmed situation is, at least today, not one of them. If it turns out racial prejudice or cultural profiling is involved then let the responsible parties have it with both proverbial barrels. But that is not yet the case, not today.

[Lil' Lavery]

Mods, can you close this thread or delete posts that should be taken to PM. This is not a productive conversation.

[teku14]

Originally Posted by wireties

Hey - you posted them in a response to a request for evidence Irving was racially and/or culturally biased. Check the mirror.



I am fully prepared and you will not fair well. So now I am Islamaphobic? Is this your modus operandi - every person who disagrees with you is -ist or -phobic. Wow.

He even called me a cyber bully... go figure...

[teku14]

Originally Posted by Lil' Lavery

Mods, can you close this thread or delete posts that should be taken to PM. This is not a productive conversation.

Agreed

[EricH]

Originally Posted by teku14

He even called me a cyber bully... go figure...

All I'm going to say can be summed up by the following statements--and it's a measure of how far offtrack the thread has been that none of them actually reference the original topic in any way, shape, or form:
1) Putting words in someone else's mouth is generally frowned on. (Applies to everybody, not just the quoted post--but quoted post is primary subject here.)
2) I'm pretty sure that whatever else was being discussed, the majority of folks reading the thread (that WEREN'T turned away by certain folks having a mostly one-on-one discussion) would have been in agreement had something like that actually been expressed. (Reference to discussion referenced by quoted post.)
3) I second/third/whatever-this-is the request to close/delete. I wouldn't mind seeing anything after about page 7 deleted, as that's when the thread went way offtrack. (Yep, that's right, half the thread or so.)

[FrankJ]

The other option is to stop restating positions & the thread will die a natural death. I am not a moderator so I don't have a say, but I am not a fan of locking threads unless they are spam or personal attacks.

[Jared Russell]

Originally Posted by Basel A

If you're waiting for the police department to release a statement stating that they are racist and discriminate against brown people, I think you'll be waiting a very long time.

QFT.

As engineers, we love when we can measure and quantify things. Discrimination and bias is _very_ difficult to objectively judge except in the aggregate. This is partially because those who perpetrate discriminatory practices are unconscious that they are doing so...and also because in many cases, it is too easy to plausibly deny that any discrimination has occurred absent an extensive third party investigation (and even then, most of the evidence often winds up being circumstantial). If you examine 100 individual cases of suspected institutional discrimination, you probably end up being unable to prove wrongdoing in 90 of them. But clearly the macro effects of discrimination are present at a greater scale than if you assume institutional innocence in all disputed cases.

In light of this challenge, celebrating the positive aspects of this story (Ahmad's interest in STEM) while not specifically scapegoating his district, his community, Texas, etc., is as good an outcome as we could have hoped for. Besides, blaming racism on an individual, a town, or a state is extremely lazy and naive.

[Karthik]

This thread is a trainwreck and being closed for that reason. I'm utterly disappointed by what I've seen here, especially blatant examples of racial insensitivity.

Let's try to do better next time a topic like this comes up.