To be sick to death of being told to not confuse terrorists with Muslims on every social media/discussion site

[Elsmom]

Erm yes... I'm not thick, I do know this. It's condescending, patronising and presumptuous. I actually think based on the lives of my Muslim neighbours and friends that there hasn't been this presumed outpouring of islamophobia and Muslims are not suffering due to the attacks in Paris at all? We, most of society can be trusted to make the distinction between terrorists and Muslims. Just sick of being lectured everytime I log onto anything!

theboody I know of several people who think that. not friends but I know of them

anyway i could argue this every day but its not worth it.

just sick of the tide of getting in there first and shutting down people who object to hate speech or offensive opinions before expressing them.

if you have the right to free speech to express them people have the right to oppose them.

and you have no idea about peoples lives on here so accusations of people having no lives are just low and unnecessary.

End of. now back to work

Fighting for the right to be offensive?

Satire, jokes, holding institutions, religions and governments up to scrutiny and possible piss take!

Very very important rights.

Theboody i agree with you.

I also agree that this week i have seen many posts by proponents of free speech effectively shout down and belittle those with opinions about hate speech. Contradictory and intolerant.

Yes fango there are always idiots but they are massively outweighed by normal people.

That's what matters.

Yes clean seen that too.

Theboody no i am not talking of satire. I am talking of lumping all muslims together for example.

Anyway clearly the two sides never shall meet. Have said my piece.

At work and no desire to argue this for another day

theboody Even shock horror those of us on mumsnet who don't have a university education.

University education hardly a guarantee of being able to present an attempt at a reasoned argument!

I must admit I get turned off a lot of so-called arguments when the user starts off with excessive hypberbole to drive home their point. It all comes across as a bit fake to me. I do agree people are far more sophisticated than some would have you believe, and I honestly do wonder what sort of friends those people have who assume everyone is really thick and cannot distinguish a terrorist from a Muslim.

Equally, those who cannot distinguish criticising parts of a religious tenet which causes problems in modern day society from criticising all Muslims.

Confronting is not shutting down.

Belittling people in advance and making comments about how they must have a sad life if they disagree with you is.

Of course we all have opinions.

Of course we all agree/disagree.

Can't get the handwringing.

The handwriting as you put it is because people don't just disagree but make deeply personal comments and make it nasty. Gets wearing after the 100th time.

Yes agree with that chandler my university point was tongue in cheek of course.

Handwringing. Autocorrect.

Does anyone else think that creating an environment, a medium, where much criticism is disapproved, is more likely to furnish a "cause" under which fanatics/terrorists/etc will thrive? That is you apply this mindset to most things, it will effectively create intolerant people who cannot cope with any other viewpoint than their own very strongly held one?

Good for you. Unfortunately there are quite a lot of morons out there.

Learn how to present your argument: cover all viewpoints, present your evidence and then come to a logical conclusion or balanced summary."

So, what you utterly failed to do in your evidence-free post of 09:42:02, then, TheChandler.

Whereas you did do pretty much this:
"...usually followed by the shutting-down the argument attempt to have the final say. "If you dare reply to this, it means you are trying to do X".

with your claim that if you post Y, it means you're trying to compensate for personal inadequacy.

I haven't presented an argument Pausing. I've made some comments, and asked a couple of questions. I'm not suggesting anyone agrees with me either. The OP is about the only person who has posted an argument.

Well, yes, its condescending, patronizing, etc, but its an important message to get across.

Its not just the right wing racists who are confusing the two, but its the terrorists themselves. Thats what makes it so potent of course.

The amount of prejudice and trivialising of prejudice by various posters against Catholics is very telling.

The boody, most of the murderers of abortion clinic staff haven't been Catholics. Why on earth would anybody feel the need to declare that there that they don't believe all Catholics are like that? You are creating prejudice by making the statement. It is like me self righteously saying that I am too tolerant to believe that all posters called theboody are torturers. Why create such a link?

Eltonjohnsflorist You said I can't imagine them replacing Mohammed with Jesus really.

But you see they did. The reason you didn't notice is that no one got shot for it.

They mocked all religion, politicians etc.

Much is made of the fact that they sacked someone for being anti-semitic, but I think that suggests something quite different. That they didn't want someone who was doing it because he actually hated one group of people.

On the subject of people thinking all Muslims are terrorists I'm sure there are plenty who do and that is wrong.

Of course we also have plenty of people who think all people opposed to religion are racists. Others seem to think that disagreeing with Islam is Islamaphobic.

And what do you say to the people who think all Muslims have dark skin ffs.

No One Murdered Because Of This Image

Disagreeing with aspects of Islam is not Islamophobic.

Posting things like an individual Muslim was being offensive by praying in public is.