Michael Lucas: Muslims ‘Have Not Contributed to Civilization In Any Way’ For Centuries

I’m not convinced some bigot who’s just made a few crappy gay porn films is that well placed to judge on other peoples’ contributions to civilization.
Just a thought…

A pornographer is criticizing others for a lack of contribution to civilization? Oy vey.

Islam is certainly a very wicked religion and has retarded African and Arab society immensely. I don’t hate the victims of the religion but I certainly hate the muslims who wish harm on their fellow muslims and the west. The same can be said for other religions. Christianity continues to disrupt gay rights, medicine, science and wants to have garbage taught in schools. Jews and Muslims make a solution in the Middle East impossible. His critique of Islam is correct.

He shouldn’t have said he hates all Muslims…nasty statement and I would hope he retract that comment.

And what have Christians contributed to civilization over the last centuries? Let’s see, Christians rounded up Muslims in Bosnia and murdered them in Jesus’ name. Christians rounded up Jews in Europe in the last century and the century before that and murdered them. In the last century these Christians called themselves Nazis. Before that they murdered Jews in pogroms. Before that for about 400 years they murdered hundreds of millions of Jews in the Inquisition.

Let’s see what else those Christians who have contributed so much to society have done. How about slavery- they kidnapped people fro Africa, sold them into slavery in America, and for 400 years American Christians kept them in slavery. They did that in Jesus’ name, too.

Let’s not forget what Christians have done to gay men and lesbians. Yes those Christians did not forget to murdered them during the inquisition either – all in Jesus’ name.

Never forget that when American Christians in the allied forces liberated the Nazi death prisons, they REIMPRISONED the gay men and lesbians, in Jesus’ name.

And now these Christians in America have continued their legacy of hate in Jesus’ name using their same hate-filled genocidal bible (which btw includes the Hebrew bible) to deny us the right to marry, serve in the military, work, live without fear of being beat up or killed in Jesus’ name.

You may hate Muslims – but I have and always will hate the heterosupremacist, bronze age sun revolves around a flat earth, slave-owner manual, genocidal bible thumping tyrannical theocRATs whose own contribution to civilization is murder in Jesus’ name – and Christians have murdered more people in their 2000 year invention than there are Muslims in the world today.

Hate is not sexy.

You can’t hate all muslims, that was a stupid comment.Islam is a wicked religion and has retarted African and Arab society immensely. The same can be said about Christianity and Judaism in different parts of the world. I know the owner of this site is a devout christian so this isn’t meant to be a personal attack.

Does Lucas make his porno where those nutty boing-boing curl wearning settlers live? I think their reaction would be the same as fundy Muslims, but does he ever criticize them?

@That Bitch Téa Delgado: (It’s only personal opinion but) Lucas isn’t much either.

(And at any rate, Mr Lucas – the zero, algebra, Avicenna… not mention: sorbet.)

We would know little or nothing of Aristotle or Greek philosophy other than than some Plato if it weren’t for the Muslims (although I think Queerty’s headline is allowing for that).

I mean other than a few novelists and poets what does this bigot think that Russians have contributed to civilization?

He’s right.

I watched a program on the machines, water systems, sanitation systems, roads, and building techniques invented and applied my Muslims in the Middle East over 500 years ago, and it was incredible. They were doing things that would not be copied for another 400 years. Before most people could read–they had libraries, and some of the best educational insititutions in the entire world.

So what happened?

@Chitown Kev: “I mean other than a few novelists and poets what does this bigot think that Russians have contributed to civilization?”

I’m sure hearing this would turn him into a sputtering, foaming loon, well, moreso.

Sorry, who was advancing science, engineering, and mathematics while Europe was wallowing in the Dark Ages?

[img]http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_QRVCnn0AreA/RvXXXY_Zc-I/AAAAAAAAAAc/M0wOd2bIDdI/s320/gay_hanging_iran.jpg[/img]

Someone pretty please explain to me why there is such a need for a Gay person to defend the muslim cultures? I am so damm sick and tired of the PC freakin’ garbage. How many horror stories do you need to hear before you realize they hate every fiber of your being and have zero problem seeing you suffer a painfull tortuous death??? And I am sooooo damm sick of hearing its “only a small number of persons in those cultures” Tell that to the two Gay teens who were arrested at ages 14 and 16 for being careless about being two kids in love. They were sentenced to 180 lashes each. They endured multiple sessions of being whipped. The body can only endure about 30 lashes until muscle and flesh begins to be torn from the body. After each session they were sent to a dark filthy cell to “heal” and then the entire process began again. Right after the last session suddenly new charges were “discovered” and they were sentenced to death. These two kids were placed upon a flatbed truck, had the blindfolds removed so they could see each other and the mob of thousands who were cheering their slow death by suffocation as the truck was slowly driven forward……..Please give me a freaking break. These scumbags are simply wired differently than us. There is no reasoning with the unreasonable…..

To all the defenders of these cultures, go to any of these countires. Proclaim your being Gay and how you wish to “defend their culture”. See how long until you are suffereing the same fate as those two kids……..

[img]http://10.1.9.23:15871/cgi-bin/blockpage.cgi?ws-session=2099571766[/img]

@Chitown Kev: Queerty’s headline is, for once, actually less inflammatory than the original statement. Lucas didn’t say “for centuries.” He said since the 7th century when the religion was founded (i.e. not at all).

And it is a really familiar argument to anyone who has studied colonialism in any detail.

If the settlers judge that you haven’t “contributed to civilization,” based on a ever changing set of metrics determined solely by them, then you are fair game for exploitation and conquest.

@PLAYS WELL WITH OTHERS: More gay pants-wetting by someone who has drunk the neo-con koolaid. I bet you think the war in Iraq was justified because Saddam got nukes from Al-Qaida.

@whatever: No not at all, this isn’t about a war that should never have been started! This is about a culture that hates your freaking guts and would kill you in a heartbeat if you dared proclaim what you were born as……..

How the fuck can you defend these creatrues? How bout the Iraquis who have their asses sealed with surgical glue and are then force fed duretics forcing diarreah so they literally explode in a trauma filled prolonged death. Each and every day Gay corpses are found on the streets subjected to uimaginable torutres prior to death……….It boggles the mind how any Gay person can defend these cultures of death for a minute……

@PLAYS WELL WITH OTHERS

Thank you for being the voice of reason. And no Lucas wasn’t saying he hates all Muslims. He was saying he hates the Islamic religion and all of it’s barbaric slaughterings of gays.

(OK so Queerty doesn’t like sorbet. Duly noted.)

If you agree or disagree he has a lot of courage for saying that. Were all so afraid of what the Muslims might do to the west we just accept them. He’s right they don’t contribute much….I’ve been to a few Muslim countries and there pretty far behind the rest of the world….. WAY TO GO Mr Lucas

@Thomas: TYVM, it absolutly boggles my mind how any actual Gay person can see the pictures of those poor teens who were murdered in front of a cheering mob of thousands and still feel the need to defend this “religion of peace and non-violence” and not be able to click the thumbs down fast enough to make the pictures disappear…..Again defenders go over to any of those coutries and tell your friends over there you are Gay, even clicking on Queerty in one of those cultures could earn you a death penalty……….

I honestly can’t believe these hateful comments for what Lucas is saying. He is DEFENDING gay people in the Middle East. He if FIGHTING for awareness for all of our gay brothers who are being brutally murdered in Muslim nations. Yes, what he says is harsh and bold. But nothing is worse than the actual torturing of homosexuals that he is fighting to end.

And I should know better than to get into this debate, because every time there’s a post about Israel/Muslims/whatnot it descends into heated catty “debates” about the fact that Israel is gay Mecca, while Mecca isn’t, well – isn’t. But.

Is it true that Israel is a better place to be gay than Muslim countries? Well, like a gay Einstein would say, it’s all relative. *Tel-Aviv* is a wonderful place to be gay, but it’s about the only city where that’s the case, and for example, Jerusalem isn’t (try having a Pride parade there and see the police help the zealots kick your sexy butt) much in the same way that, say, Morocco is a much better place to be gay than Saudi Arabia, or obviously, Iran.

Is it true that Islam doesn’t really like us? You betcha. But mind you, I don’t really feel the love vibes coming from the Jewish and Christian founding texts (or their current-day followers) either.

Does Israel protect gays better? Unarguably it does, provided you’re not a Palestinian one. Gay Palestinian kids who escape to Israel are routinely deported back, to a destiny I, indeed, wouldn’t want to live through.

But aren’t there many Matthew Shepards in Muslim countries? Yes, quite a few, but there are quite a few ones in ours too.

This isn’t to say that, on average, gays fare off worse in Islamic countries than in Israel – but it is to say that we should always be cautious about blanket statements like “all Muslims are bad” or “all Jews are bad”. Generalities are meaningless, and let’s not forget that averages can mislead, as for example would we humans follow averages, we’d all have one breast, one ball, one ovary and a very weird-looking penis.

(I have one comment flagged that’s not appearing and re-reading it, the only word I can spot that could be problematic is “p.e.n.i.s”. Really, Queerty? :))

Well, it has a ring of truth in it.

I can’t believe some of the comments I am reading in this thread.

There is a HUGE difference between Muslims as a whole and fundamentalist Muslims — as with ANY religion. I have Muslim friends who support gay equality. Lucas’ statements are ignorant, offensive, and — at least when it comes to the part about the lack of any sort of contribution to society — verifiably false.

I don’t understand the defense of Islam through the rebuke of Christianity. All that religious nonsense, including Judaism, is the source of much evil and destruction. None of it is worth defending and the sooner the world overcomes religion, the better off it will be.

Funny if he had said he hate Christianity and it’s followers, most of the people defending Islam would agree with him and cheer him on.

Yes, muslims were more advanced than Europeans at one point but they have been surpassed a long time ago. What he asks, is what have they contributed in the last few hundred years. Anyone?

yes Christians have done horrible things and so have muslims such as the sacking of Vienna which including raping the city leaders son in the church, beheading those who dare express dif views.

There is difference between preaching I’m going to hell then calling for my death and making it happen.

Also the concept of Zero was an Indian thing.

So, what part of his statement isn’t true? It’s not hate, it’s the truth. All religions are hateful, and religion is the cause for the vast majority of problems the world over.

@L.: said..

No. 9 · L.
(And at any rate, Mr Lucas – the zero, algebra, Avicenna… not mention: sorbet.)
__________________________________

Zero seems to have been independently developed in both India and the Mesoamerican civlizations, with earlier half uses of it by the Greeks and Babylonyains.

AS for Algebra, Muhammad ibn M?s? al-Khw?rizm? learned Indian Mathmatics and while he did introduce them to the Muslim world he did not create it. The roots can be traced even further back again to the Greeks and Babylonians.

Avicenna is a Philosepher from the 8th century, nothing unusual there.

Sorbet – is thought to have origionated in China although folklore claims that the Emperor Nero somewhat invented it in the 1st century.

@L.: !LOL One of the most mystifying aspects in the Gay world………..You can freely post cock, prick, dick, or any other word to describe your junk, however if you insert your p e n i s (ha ha) ya get auto flagged……….

There is no “Clash of Civilizations”, it is a bullshit fantasy invented to justify our cold war military budget in the post war world. All the “Clash of Civilizations” shit does is encourage isolation and conflict.

I thoroughly object to anti-Muslim bigotry, ESPECIALLY when it is being peddled by bullshit arbiters of reason, like that whore Michael Lucas and the idiot Bill Maher. It has nothing to do with criticizing religion. Nothing. What it is is FOSTERING OF NATIONALISTIC HATRED. That is all it is. “Draw Muhammed Day” had nothing to do with “free speech”, it was to rile up resentment of Muslims.

Anti-Muslim bigotry like what Michael Lucas vomits is to DEFEND American foreign policy. It is to DEFEND our aggression in the middle east. Given that Michael Lucas is an idiot, he doesn’t seem to realize that there is a Muslim world outside of the Middle East. It has nothing to do with reason or criticism of religion.

@Cam:

Congratulations Cam, you just described the concept of syncretism. This is a concept that is well documented amongst all civilizations in history, EXCEPT for Europe, where my ancestors are portrayed as thinking up great discoveries by accident when that is clearly not true. I know you think your argument is brilliant, but it is only considered brilliant to the eurocentric mind.

@PLAYS WELL WITH OTHERS: Two-thirds of the named stars have Arabic names. There is a reason for this which is that Muslims named them. Without Muslims our knowledgs of mathematics, astromony, etc. would be very much poorer.

@ousslander: If he said that he hated Christinas I WOULD disagree with him. We should criticise bigotry, etc. but there is no need to be arrogant as Mr. Lucas seems to be.

@ousslander: You can’t take credit for the advances mase in the Western World in recent centuries just as Muslims can’t take credit for the advances made by fellow Muslims. George Bernard Shaw, Jonathan Swift, W.B. Yeats and James Joyce were Irish yet I don’t pretend to be a literary genius because I share the same nationality as them.

The people being teated terribly in homophobic societies are also Muslim so being bigoted towards Muslims is just stupid.

@John (CA):

Yes it is, Queerty’s headline is actually on the ball for a change.

For example, the Muslims of the …10th and 11th centuries I want to say, were actually manufacturing sugar and taught the Europeans to do that as well.

Shit other than some of those monks cloistered in European monastaries, Christianity needed Islam, in part, to revive the culture and writings of classical antiquity.

Oh, and even Nietzsche gave credit to the Jews for quite a few things.

And no one is defending the Muslim culture of today, but Lucas stating that Islam made NO contributions to world culture is just flat out WRONG.

What he and other moronic bigots like him fail to realize is they find ways to ride the coattails of others who may or may not have something in common with them(skin color, religion, sexuality, etc).

He hasn’t done a damned thing to contribute to civilization. Most of the people on the planet haven’t done a damned thing to contribute to civilization.

It drives me crazy how so many people try and take credit for the accomplishments of others.

I remember reading a post by an idiot from Stormfront about how white people(yes anyone with white skin) created all of the advancements in technology we enjoy today. Aside from the fact that many various inventors with different backgrounds(racial and national) are responsible for those advancements, everyone with white skin did not get together and create this technology. So why take credit? The idiot who made the post didn’t create a thing. What’s there to be proud about? The inventor should be proud, not you.

Bigots should just keep their mouths shut. But if they had that much sense they wouldn’t be so ignorant in the first place.

@GaryG: The last part. That’s fine to think what you want about Muslims today and their religion, but you don’t need to justify it by rewriting history. As others have pointed out, Muslim scholars were responsible for reintroducing Greek and Roman authors to Western Europe, effectively ending the Dark Ages and paving the way for the Renaissance and Enlightenment. There’s a reason we use Arabic numerals. Western architecture was also heavily influenced by the Muslims, especially the Moors in Spain. To say they have contributed nothing to civilization shows a great deal of ignorance.

But then, I should expect that from a porn star.

@Robert: Maybe its because the muslim are on a mission to destroy all those who do not kowtow to their islamic beliefs. I wish every single non-muslim person in the world would sport a muhamad tee shirt one day. Make their freakin heads spin. Who the fuck are they to claim the right to impose the penalty of death on someone who “offends their religion”??? And you defend it???????

I am simply amazed how somewhat intelligent persons would defend their cultures. Maybe you think there will be a way to find “common ground” with these lunatics. Good luck in that endevaour. Try talking reason to the Father and Brothers of the muslim girl who was raped, who took part in the stoning of her to death because by being raped she “dishonored the family” A whole village turns out to cheer on and particpate in the stoning of another human being. The spectacle is designed to make sure the victim stays alive at least 30 minutes. They chose and posiiton the “correct sized” rocks so as not to cause immediate death. These creatures are simply wired differently than a civilized human being. Even animals only kill for food and to protect their territory.

Again I dare every one of you supposed Gays to take a trip over to any muslim country and proclaim that you are Gay……….see how many are able to make the return trip to continue defending these cultures………

And besides, white folks of the ” true Aryan type of mind” are not too keen on Russians; they don’t even see the Russians as true Europeans.

and JEWISH Russians…heaven forbid.

Hating one religion or judging one just on the acts of some of its believer is not the way it shuould be mr lucas. On the point of contribution, I guess it can be taken positively by the muslims.

Gosh, you guys at Queerty sure give lots of space to that old he-whore, hate-monger Michael Lucas. Does he pay you guys for his all this publicity?

@Robert: said…

@Cam:

Congratulations Cam, you just described the concept of syncretism. This is a concept that is well documented amongst all civilizations in history, EXCEPT for Europe, where my ancestors are portrayed as thinking up great discoveries by accident when that is clearly not true. I know you think your argument is brilliant, but it is only considered brilliant to the eurocentric mind.
____________________________

Robert, your agenda becomes abundently clear when you consider the following.

1. I wasn’t engaging in syncretism, I was, in no uncertain terms pointing out that the claims of the person were incorrect.

2. you claim that I must think my argument is “Brilliant”. I made no argument, once again, I merely pointed out that discoveries and inventions that this person was claiming to have been Muslim discoveries, were in fact discoveries by Indians, Babylonians, Mesoamericans etc…

You you rant and foam at the mouth about how Eurocentric my “Argument” was, did that get you a good grade in your sophmore sociology class? Because I simply listed facts, additionally, other than the Greeks having a hand in algebra, all of my supposedly “Eurocentric” argument gave credit for all of the discoveries to Babylonians, Indians, Mesoamericnas, and the Chinese…my my my, how Eurocentric of me.

You need to stop reacting in such a knee-jerk fasion and think for yourself occaisionally.

I love westerners. Actually, no this is not a condition of westerns but a condition of the ignorant. I love ignorance. I love people who lack an understanding of history. A cursory glance at history teaches us that societies who are affluent; economically, culturally and politically, tend to look the other way (for better or for worse) for behavior outside the norm occurs.

The Roman empire during the days of the early emperors, Florence in the early days of Medici rule (pre and post-Savanarola), The Golden Era of the Weimar Republic. Even those savage, flithy “Muslim societies” supported a non-heterosexual culture and depicted it as religious mysticism.

Just because our societies nod approvingly (and even that is a farce; DOMA, DADT, gay-bashings are still common throughout North America) does not mean they will continue to honor their word.Hate, especially hate for sexual diversity, is channeled through many excuses; religion, race, culture, economic suzerainty. We are Faggots, faries, dykes and deviants. We are a minority, and when things get rough, they will come after us first.

My point is this; Today Muslims might be killing queer peoples (and even that is a ridiculous statement because not all Muslims do and there are Muslim queers- like myself) and tomorrow it might be Ugandan African populations. But when our societies begin their decline, you better damn sure believe its gonna be your citizens who come after you. Don’t put too much trust in laws, judgments and glorified pieces of paper. They burn easy, much like colorful queer subcultures.

I mean other than a few novelists and poets what does this bigot think that Russians have contributed to civilization?

Three of the very greatest composers who have ever lived: Tchaikovsky (gay), Prokofiev and Stravinksy. Two incredible 20th century painters, Chagall and Kandinsky. Ballet dancers such as Najinsky (gay), Nureyev (gay) and Baryshnikov. Chereographers such as Petipa, Folkine and Balachine, and the impresario Diaghelev, whose Ballets Russe had an incalculable effect on early 20th century art.

That’s for starters, philistine.

Islam, as w/ Christianity and Judaism, are the scourge of human existence and have only been detrimental to society. He is mostly correct.

Henry, you need to work on detecting sarcasm.

Yonatan: “I honestly can’t believe these hateful comments for what Lucas is saying. He is DEFENDING gay people in the Middle East. He if FIGHTING for awareness for all of our gay brothers who are being brutally murdered in Muslim nations. Yes, what he says is harsh and bold. But nothing is worse than the actual torturing of homosexuals that he is fighting to end.”

Hm, if that were actually his main concern, one would think he might chose to address that directly, rather than demonizing Muslims as a whole.

Thank goodness not all Israelis are as bigoted as you.

Is he for real?
Muslims helped develop Mathematics, philosophy, the science of optics, astronomy etc. Without them the Renaissance wouldn’t have been possible given that they translated Ancient Greek texts to Arabic and thus they were preserved. Without them Western Civilisation would have been very different.

@PLAYS WELL WITH OTHERS:
Muslims are on a mission to destroy non-Muslims? You are the principle example of 21st century cable news brain rot. You do not know a single Muslim and you have made that abundantly clear. I am not defending the death penalty for any reason, but the sole and single purpose for the “Draw Muhammad Day” nonsense is to rile up hatred of Muslims. Because some idiot Muslim out in some basement says “kill those people”, you use that as a prime example to defend Muslim bigotry.

You live on some other planet not called earth, I happen to live in a country called the United States. Here, 99.9999999999999999% of Muslims didn’t give the first fuck about any Muhammad drawings. Many vocally voiced their objection to it and said how it was offensive, and that is their right. I say good, they should have. It didn’t have anything to do with free speech, it didn’t have anything to do with “challenging religion.” It had everything to do with concentrating hatred and disdain against a minority that has been routinely harassed by my country’s government, and a country where bigotry against not only their religion but their RACE is not only acceptable, but encouraged!

You yourself are showing how big of an idiot you are with your KKK, David Duke, Adolf Hitler style language when you say “these creatures are simply wired differently.” First of all, you god damned Nazi, Islam is a religion. It has nothing to do with biology. Did that blow your mind? How about this: Muslim “culture” is not some uniform, one size fits all sheet (unlike the sheets you wear when you burn crosses). Did you know that the majority of Muslims in the world are NOT Arab? Slow down brother, take a deep breath, I understand this is a lot for you. Did you know that, Muslim “culture” in the United States is identical to the culture OF the United States? Ok, I know, many Muslims aren’t white so I’m sure they don’t count, but this country’s Muslim population is one of the most successful minorities. Oh, now I see why you hate Muslims – you’re jealous!

As for me being gay in a “Muslim country”, I will most likely be thrown in jail or executed. However, the rampant homophobia is largely a western, European/American import, because since the fall of the Ottomans, Europeans and Americans have been routinely supporting and encouraging the most reactionary and most fundamentalist currents in the Muslim world. Homophobia is wide spread in the “Muslim world”, and it would be a good idea not to peddle Samuel Huntington’s horseshit “Clash of Civilizations” bullshit that does nothing but isolates the West from the monolith we refer to as the “Muslim world.”

@Cam:

Advancements made by Muslims in history are the result of cultural exchange, which is identical to advancements made in Europe. Eurocentric historians discredit advancements in math, astronomy, chemistry, physics and other sciences from Islamic civilizations by pointing out how cultures that surround them or within them had thought out a similar idea prior to their “discoveries.” The implication is that there was never an “original idea”, but it was copied from other people. As I said in my first sentence, this is identical to how scientific (and other, especially exploration) advancements happened in Europe.

I am not a sociology major and I have never taken sociology, I study something much more boring than that (nutritional science).

Michael Lucas is absolutely right!!!

@Robert:

Robert, I think it’s odd that you would claim that anti-gay bigotry is a western import into Muslim lands. Just a few snippets from the Qur’an. (Although your point is well taken about the support given to reactionaries, except of course, the Shah, and the house of Sauud, but then again, the Saudi’s themselves made deals with the so called devil)

“We also sent Lut: He said to his people: Do ye commit lewdness such as no people in creation (ever) committed before you? For ye practice your lusts on men in preference to women: ye are indeed a people transgressing beyond bounds. And his people gave no answer but this: they said, “Drive them out of your city: these are indeed men who want to be clean and pure!”" (Qur’an 7:80-82)

“Of all the creatures in the world, will ye approach males, And leave those whom Allah has created for you to be your mates? Nay, ye are a people transgressing (all limits)! They said: “If thou desist not, O Lut! thou wilt assuredly be cast out!” He said: “I do detest your doings:” “O my Lord! deliver me and my family from such things as they do!” So We delivered him and his family,- all Except an old woman who lingered behind. But the rest We destroyed utterly. We rained down on them a shower (of brimstone): and evil was the shower on those who were admonished (but heeded not)! Verily in this is a Sign: but most of them do not believe. And verily thy Lord is He, the Exalted in Might, Most Merciful.” (Qur’an 26:165-175)

Texting while driving is a bigger killer/threat than Islamic terror. I’m not gonna hype something as a menace becuase some shiftless, nebbish neo-con in some think tank tells me it is.

@Cam: I know, I know – but it’s the Arabs who brought all these to us, to our civilization, as Mr Lucas put it. Also, as someone else commented, a big slice of Greek/Egyptian/Antiquity knowledge would have been lost to us if not for the Arabs, because at the same time our oh-so-tolerant Catholic church was so busy burning non-Christian manuscripts.

I don’t ignore Michael Lucas because he’s a porn star, I ignore him cause he’s stupid. Islam accounts for about 1.6 billion people. And every single one of them are evil? And none contributed anything to the world?

And people saying not to defend Islam because of gay killings and terrorism have a point, those acts are inherently evil, except those acts have been done by Muslim extremists, not by run of the mill Muslims. Just as all the Christian bashing on here has been targeted against the actions of Christian extremists. A great many Christians support gay marriage and rights and I cannot think of one Christian I personally know that doesn’t support gay rights. Just like there are Muslims who support gay rights (I know many).

So to attack Christians and Muslims as a blanket group when there are gay Christians and Muslims in the world, and when there are Christians and Muslims who support gay rights isn’t a very good tactic. On the same note, I am more than willing to rally against extremist Muslims and Christians who would seek to harm us or deny us our rights. We’re sorta flying a double standard here if we alienate both groups as evil due to the actions of extremists.

ugh- so boring. to all the queens who think islam is a “religion” and “culture” worth saving… please go to them.. run them even…an I’ll watch your stoning or hanging on you tube…or with any luck it will be a nice wall toppling on you… nothing says “summer” in the year 2010 like a good ol’ wall toppling on a gay man, adulterous woman, or dumb chick who showed to much “cankle” at the halall market.

to those who understand this hatred and mental midgetry masquerading as “religion” and “culture”- save your breath. dim queens living in “my pretty pony land” just want to spread love and good vibes, man, ya know? “Like whay can’t we all just get along, right?” They wont get it.

As for Michael Lucas- I will glady take an porn star’s opinion over some fool who wil strap a bomb to himself, his kid or his wife so that he can kill and gte to his 72 virgins in heaven faster. This region and cuture was left in the dust years ago, it took israel moving in a building infrastructure, civilization and culture to make it less of a stink pit.

@Cam:

Cam, I agree with what you are saying. I apologize for calling you Eurocentric, and using a harsh tone in responding to you. That other guy got me pretty riled up, and I disagreed with what you said but I should have done it in a more respectful way.

When I said that homophobia is a western import, I didn’t mean it literally. The Quran is explicitly homophobic, and that obviously is a cultural influence. However, I also think it is worth pointing out that until recently, criticism of and challenges to Islamic doctrine by Muslims in the middle east was a common occurrence. With the fall of the Ottoman empire and the support of the most reactionary sections of Islamic society has made a reversal in many areas of progress.

Another problem with painting all Muslims with one brush obscures some, interesting to say the least, cultural aspects. In a lot of countries and cultures, having sex with a guy isn’t looked down upon at all. In fact, it is considered “manly.” However, the one who is receiving is looked down upon and considered “feminine.”

Also, I think it is worth considering how homophobia manifests not only in the “Muslim world” but in the “third world” as well. Homosexuality is viewed as a western import, and that gay sex and relationships are the result of upper class decadence. Actually, I would not only say the third world, but the first world as well.

@Henry Holland:

Good, but much if that is 19th and 20th century stuff. (My apologies for forgetting Najinsky, he was incredible).

But now science? philosophy? (you could squeeze Dostovesky in there, since he was such an obvious influence of Nietzsche).

Hell, in the literary realm, I could say Vladimir Propp and Mikhail Bakhatin (sp?)…those 2 are obscure to many folks…

But the fact is much of Russia emulated other European civilization and tried their best to copy them, especially the French.

@PLAYS WELL WITH OTHERS: Oh. So I need to be graphic rather than anatomical? Who knew? :)

@Cam:

What exactly does your quote prove? That a shallow interpretation of a quranic ayat is against homosexuality? I think that’s pretty easily understood. What Robert meant about importing anti-homosexuality sentiments from the european powers is, by and large, true. Many of the so called “muslim” (and people I can’t highlight this enough, “muslim-islam” is a heavily contested identity that is in no way monolithic. Muslims come in all forms of observance and from all types of political and social leanings. Are all christians the same? are all queers the same? yeesh, one would expect more from a social groups that identifies it self as rainbow.) lands were colonized by european powers, particularly Anglo-protestant powers. Historically, homosexuality had been widely associated with the levantine-orient. Sodomy, effeminacy were widely associated with Ottoman, Qajar and Mughal empires. Previous to European presence homosexuality, well I guess what we would call homosexuality today, was present within the literary and religious milieu of many “muslim” societies. Don’t get me wrong, there were no pride parades but there is extensive literature about same-sex behavior (predominantly male, I’m sorry ladies if there is one standard throughout history it is the rampant sexism and silence that is enforced upon you in mainstream avenues of power; politics and art). The decline in the same-sex appreciatory culture occurred during the shifting of most Islamic political powers; the late nineteenth century. “Modernization” was either enforced by european colonial powers (like the case of India, indonesia etc) or were adopted by Islamic rulers themselves (Like the Ottoman lands). European colonial powers (nor all of european culture mind you) presented homosexual behaviour as morally wrong and in an attempt to modernize, many of the muslim intelligentsia (who were trained in european universities btw) happily agreed (actually it was one of the few places where european *surprise* heterosexual bourgeois men agreed with muslim heterosexual bourgeois men.

European colonial society provided the fodder and Muslim powers gladly accepted. When a society goes through drastic social, economic and cultural upheavals, it is not uncommon for fringe groups such as ethnic and religious minorities to suffer exclusion because the societies in question must re-address their identity and create new boundaries. With time and prosperity those boundaries shift and usually expand.

P.S, I understand that the terms European, Muslim as presented here are pretty shallow and there is certainly more diversity within those categories as presented in this diatribe. I also understand that a microhistorical analysis might present differing results (context changes everything) but by and large a macrohistorical analysis of sexuality and its impact by colonialism as presented here is pretty standard.

I hope that helps in understanding why “muslims” seem to hate “queers”. Ugh… I hate popular history with its stupid categories.

@Cam @Robert: I think you guys are touching on a very interesting question there.

The Quran is indeed homophobic, but so are the Bible and Torah – and since the Quran does derive in some important parts from the earlier founding texts, maybe some questionable pieces in it may be argued to come from “Western” religions.

Robert’s historical point is also very valid: opinion did turn against criticism and research after the fall of the great Caliphates – as it does (and did, even in Europe) in most societies who undergo what they feel is a threat to their very existence, and where they turn more fundamentalist, which by definition excludes “rewrites” or critical study. (It should be noted that this has been ebb-and-flow throughout Muslim history, not only in the Ottoman period: times of crisis regularly brought scholars under fire, and were regularly followed by more relaxed and study-friendly periods, only to have the cycle start over again.)

About homosexuality being considered “Western” though (which it is undoubtedly said to be, and in some other developing countries as well), I’d venture the opinion that this is a recent development, and a fig leaf used by the more hardheaded clerical/political so that they can blame it on somebody else and not have to face that, as we know, it has been of all places and all times. Let’s note again that those “accusations” are being levied in countries and places that are not enjoying the best of their times as well, when it is a /sadly) natural tendency to look for scapegoats.

@Robert: Sorry little Robby you just ended my dialouge with you by resorting to typical Queerty child like name calling. I tossed zero insults your way and you have to revert to the schoolyard and toss out names and insults…

I am a “god dammed nazi” you state I find it intersting your choice of words considering a main goal of these muslim scum is the total destruction of the state of Israel and the anilahation of the Jewish people. And a good deal of the muslim defenders simply use their “support” of these vile scumbags as a veiled show of their rabid anti-semetism……….jus’ sayin Robby boy…..

The truth hurts. But the same can be said about fundamentalist christianity here in America.

Religion poisons everything. It’s useless superstition and it’s time we left it behind.

Lucas has clearly never heard of the Islamic Golden Age from the 8th to 13th centuries, when Muslim places like Baghdad were pretty much the cultural center of the world.

Yes, the Arab world pretty much sucks now, but that has almost nothing to do with Islam and much to do with repeated attacks and colonial interference from the Europeans, Ottomans, and Mongols from the 11th century on and the discovery of huge amounts of oil that has financed dictatorship after dictatorship.

I would never say I hate all Muslims. Nor all Christians, Jews & Mormons. Some of them are doing good despite their spiritual handicap.
But I would never follow any of the Abrahamic religions willingly. There are some serious flaws in the belief structures. And unfortunately it causes more damage than good.

algebra

@PLAYS WELL WITH OTHERS: Problem with some people is they prefer to prescribe your political beliefs rather actually debate them. I agree with you Islam is a horrible religion (not that I think religions are good at all). It demands submission and is hostile to freedom and, by extension, gay rights.

If a porn star says that Islam is a blight on the earth it shows he has a clear grasp on reality. If a anyone, even a former or current president, calls Islam a religion of peace, he is either a fool or a liar.

@Robert:

Well said, and no problem about the first repsonse. discussions on these topics can get a bit heated.

I do not believe that anyone that is ‘devoutly’ religious has contributed to the forward momentum of the world in a long time!

Sure there are religious people who have, but they are never fundamentalists.

It is just that you hardly ever get ‘partial’ muslims, they all tend to be hardcore followers.

So signaling out muslims is not a hundred percent correct, but it is the biggest religious group against ‘separation of church and state’!

No. 4 · J wrote, “And what have Christians contributed to civilization over the last centuries? ”

Well, at the risk of parodying The Life of Brian (“What have the Romans done for us?”), Christians supported Johann Sebastian Bach, Hector Berlioz (who was an atheist), and various other musicians by helping them keep food on the table. Christian’s sexual hangups provided material for literature (Hawthorn’s The Scarlet Letter). They also ran various social services as charities (although at one point, one in England, run by formidable morally-upright women, was known by the poor as “Cringe or Starve”).

@L.:

Interestingly, when I took my first college level religion course, my professor had us study Judaism, Christianity, and Islam as a group because being as Islam is, in part, derived from Judaism, Islam is properly a “Western religion” and should be studied as such.

@PLAYS WELL WITH OTHERS: Sorry but that brush is a bit too wide, I fear.

Certainly not *all* Muslims want the destruction of the state of Israel – a sizable plurality, perhaps (and then they’d argue that its creation was maybe not all that fair, as it wasn’t Europe’s place to give away land that did not belong to them in order to atone for Europe’s indelible sins against the Jews; say, Bavaria may have been an apter choice, you know: make the guilty pay for the crime.)

And most certainly not *all* want the annihilation of the Jewish people. The only ones are decidedly fringe boneheads, and they don’t number much. They may even number in the same percentages as those who want the same in the US, and definitely number less than those who wished for that in late 1930s Germany.

At any rate, I feel your use of “those Muslim scum” is about as constructive as Jihadists’ use of “those Yankee scum”. Won’t take anyone far on any road to progress and mutual comprehension.

@Chitown Kev: Well, we do need double quotes around that “Western” :) But the Quran does consider Jews and Christians “people of the Book”, recognizing the lineage. And all the top-billed people in the Torah/Old Testament play similarly prominent roles in Islam (which complicates matters no end when it comes to “sacred” places in the Mideast, but that’s another matter.)

Even Jesus is a big guy in Islam. Muhammad only considered both previous books as “imperfect revelations”, but revelations nonetheless, which is why he suggested less harsh treatment for them than he did for other group of “infidels”.

And, for those who haven’t seen it and would like to watch something quite enlightening (and at times quite self-critical) about Islam, I cannot recommend enough you give Georg Misch’s 2008 doc film “The Road To Mecca” a shot.

It’s about a young Jewish man who converted to Islam and went on to become the UN ambassador for Pakistan and write an acclaimed translation of the Quran into English. He also authored a book, which gives the film its name, and which goes into deeper detail, as only books can do. (But the film is really worth watching, if only for the contemporaries’ take on Asad himself and on Islam.)

Both gets several thumbs up from this Ebert here.

Lucas is a moron, but it’s also hard to defend Islam (or Christianity or most other religions). All of them have waged bloody wars, led huge internal purges, and generally been cited as the last bastion of some of the most despicable causes of mankind — slavery, oppression of women, homophobia.

Yet despite all the incredible power that institutional religion has (including social power, financial power, institutional power, and even the power to kill people), it acts like a poor precious wimpy little victim whenever it is criticized, and all atheists/agnostics/free-thinkers are automatically herded into Lucas’s camp.

Don’t waste time on Michael Lucas. If you want porn there’s a great porn movie called “Affirmative Blacktion” that takes on racism and other kinds of hatred in America. I saw clips on You Tube. It’s a very positive, uplifting, and poignant comedy adressing these very issues.

@Brian Miller: I totally agree with you on that last bit. It was both funny and depressing to see the Vatican’s reactions to the explosion of abuse cases, saying it was “just murmurs” and “a world-wide media plot”. It can be one or the other, but hardly both. (Let’s leave aside the Church comparing the scandal to the Holocaust.) And blaming media? Shoot the messenger much, Ben?

Yes, why don’t we all just hate everyone else. That sounds like a totally viable solution to our community’s problems. They hate us? Let’s hate them MORE. That’ll show them. And when everyone’s dead because we’ve all killed each other, we’ll all finally be able to reap the benefits of…wait. Of what?

Michael Lewis is a fucking idiot, and the ONLY thing that should be coming out of his mouth is the cum someone unloaded on his tongue after administering a blow job.

Having said that, I can’t believe people on here are actually giving this guy props. This is a correct assessment of the 1.6 billion people who currently practice Islam in one form or another to you? My advice, get out more. Turn off the TV and quit getting all your information from the Middle East or Islam in general from The New Republic and Daniel Pipes. Are there plenty of bigoted Muslims in the world? Of course, there’s 1.6 billion Muslims total so there’s bound to be a good percentage who are quite frankly ignorant schmucks. This is true of ANY religion, and especially true of any religion with such a large amount of followers. However, that DOES NOT mean Islam ITSELF is evil or inherently violent. No religion is inherently anything. Religion… or the sacred as some term it…. is ambivalent. It can be used in such a way as to make it a force of oppression and tyranny. And it can be used in such a way as to make it a tool of progress and reconciliation. The interpretation of ANY religious text has never been monolithic. And the interpretation of the religious experience in general has never been of one narrative. Lets remember to bring some nuance to discussion like these people. If you’d prefer not to be stereotyped and pigeon holed then it would be at least somewhat consistent of you not to do the same to an entire religion.

Also, does anyone think we’re helping our gay brothers and sisters in countries like Iran by outright dissing the religion they still likely follow (along with their friends, family, etc.)? What does all of this religion bashing (whether it be Islam in this case or Christianity in many others) hope to accomplish? Do you really think mocking and derision of intensely personal beliefs is going to make things better? How do you feel when one mocks you, or vilifies you, for believing what YOU do about homosexuality? I know I don’t take kindly to it when someone mocks gays in front of me or paints us all with such broad strokes. Are you any different?

@L.:

Zero was invented by Hindus. Muslims stole it.

lech tezdayen michael lucas.

Michael is absolutely right. THe greatest threat facing out world today is Islam. It is a backwards, barbaric ideology and we would be wiser to recognize that rather than try to be politically correct.

Let’s be real here….Islam is a hateful religion. So is Christianity, Judaism, all the world’s religions are plagues that have been responsible for more deaths & suffering than all the world’s wars.

Religions are about power, and control. Why does the Bible say that if a woman come to marriage & is not a virgin, she MUST be killed (to be clear, stoned to death). Who wrote this hateful nonsense? God? Or insecure patriarchal desert bigots of 2000-years-ago?

I love it when Christians want to pick & choose a few cuddly platitudes from the Bible, and hold them out as though they are enough to base a life upon. How silly! The Bible is full of ridiculous, hateful nonsense – and the Christian voodoo & superstitions are not even compelling. I mean…the Virgin Mary? You’re kidding me, right?

Please…enough enough already! John Lennon was right: Imagine no religion.

Oh, this is ridiculous. The Muslim empires have, over history, contributed more to culture than almost any other religious group. Science, algebra, math, art, poetry. Islam was one of the first most tolerant religions in the world. Seriously, I’ve decided to just boycott this ridiculous man’s porn.

This morning’s entry on the Sleep Talking Man blog includes this little gem, which soooo applies to Michael Lucas:

“You’ve got a nice face. But your personality is one huge cock block.“

@Otis Criblecoblis: The difference is the bible says those things but it does not happen, however Muslims will follow through and stone the woman,

This is just an observation but in my opinion of the blog posts that I’ve seen on here race coupled with religion always get the most comments as well as views on this site as well as others yet there are still those who seem to think that these topics are a non-issue!

In my mind this is baffling!

@Otis Criblecoblis:

“all the world’s religions are plagues that have been responsible for more deaths & suffering than all the world’s wars.”

Uh, Taoism? Buddhism? Jainism? Any of the religions of indigineous peoples?

The Taj Mahal in Agra, India was built by a Mughal Emperor. The Mughal dynasty was Muslim, and were known for their poetry, art, architecture, music, and relatively liberal form of government. The dynasty ended only after its last great Emperor, Aurangzeb, turned into a fundamentalist in the early 18th C, and killed off the creativity the Mughals were known for.

For all the pictures one has seen of the Taj, it remains one monument that totally takes your breath away when one sees it in reality.

Can’t say the same for this ugly porn creature.

@ousslander:

The Christian Taliban extremists are still killing in the name of their ‘God’. Abortion doctors have been threatened & shot by Christian nutters.

The Catholic Church is arguably the most corrupt ‘legitimate’ organization in the world. The weirdos that inhabit the Vatican & enable systematic child abuse should be put on trial.

Christians historically have committed horrible atrocities – and that includes the Church itself. Witches were burned at the stake, and people were tortured & killed just for challenging the Christian Church’s authority…not isolated incidents, the Church’s history is rife with such horrific events.

@Chitown Kev: I wouldn’t call Buddhism a religion. It is a way of approaching life that really does make a lot of sense.

I’m talking about instutionalized religions – this shouldn’t be too hard to grasp. My main point is that Christianity, Islam & Judaism were created by men to consolidate their power, and they have stopped at nothing across the ages to keep people in line.

The world would indeed be better off without organized religion. And it’s absurd that religious people try to pretend that there can be no morality without religion – that is just idiotic. On balance, religion is a horrible invention of man.

No. 65 · Blake J wrote, “It is just that you hardly ever get ‘partial’ muslims, they all tend to be hardcore followers.”

… not true at all. Try visiting an Islamic country. Many people are anything but “hardcore”. You know, like Americans
who go to church on Sunday to put in an appearance but who
otherwise ignore religion the rest of the week. Of course,
the people who do that aren’t particularly vocal so you never
hear about them. When you don’t take something all that seriously, you generally don’t talk about it a lot.

@Otis Criblecoblis: The churcu has done horrible things over the centuries but they also did great good wether they still do is another problem. As for abortion doctors being killed, the killers are prosecuted not cheered on by the state and large percentage of popula

tions.
I am concerned with herr and now and the future. The current scourge using twisted religion that wants us dead or undrr boot heel. That would be islam

just as thechurch committed atrocities there us a corresponding one by islamists

George Wallace, Strom Thurmond, Maggie Gallagher, Ku Klux Klan, Michael Lucas- all bigoted old farts

Muslims sold Africans to Christians for slavery too….I think both groups have/had fucked up people in them doing vile things to innocent people in the name of religion.

And porn isn’t exactly an enlightening phenomenon, either.

@Otis Criblecoblis:

Actually, I would call Buddhism a form of psychology, if anything…probably the first of its’ kind in the history of the world.

And both Buddhism and Jainism arose in the 6th century in reaction to the oppressiveness of Hinduism, just as a more philosophical Taoism arose in reaction to the rigidity of Confucius’ teachings (although there was always a sort of folk Taoism practiced by the indigenous Chinese.

Can I just say that I am not going to join in this debate?

Buddhism & Taoism are not necessarily theistic. Both would be best typified as philosophies. Buddha reacted verry strongly against Hinduism and never preached about a god. Although some variants of Buddhism are classified as a religion by westerners, the principle edicts are based on philosophy, although the psychological aspects make for worthy study.

words: Shanelle
typography: Goochi
inspiration: Dalai Lama
good author: Pema Chodron
outerwear: SPF 35
innerwear: kindness
underware: that’s a secret but it’s organic cotton

I am a muslim and i support the gay community. Islam should not be criticised so harshly. I’m a supporter of all. i love all. Michael lucas should lay back on the religious ignorance that he conveys. and he should know that we muslims have made many contributions to society. And all who hate muslims should know that we do not hate you. The almighty Allah loves all. And why my gay community must you slam people of islam. not all people of islam are the same. islam spreads love not hate. You all who criticised so harshly and ignorantly. you who did not give islam a chance are indeed the evil ones.

@edrick: Thanks for the support. My criticisms are not against all muslims, just those that want our destruction. I believe most commenters are the same. It would help if prominent muslims in m.e and in the west would speak up and explicity condem terrorism and the brutal treatment of gays, women. Unfortunately those voices are few and far between and softly spoken.

Well, Islamic societies did contribute considerably during Medieval Era, but certainly not without influence of ancient Greeks and Romans. So, the entire debate on ‘who contributed more’ is utterly ridiculous and meaningless. Nevertheless, I am sick and tired of all the whitewashing and sugarcoating of Muslims. It’s obvious that the most homophobic societies are currently Islamic ones, even so-called ‘secular’ Turkey is still overwhelmingly homophobic. Apparently, it’s perfectly acceptable to bash Christians, and yet it’s a complete taboo to utter anything negative about Muslims. It’s the mantra of political correctness at best, or an example of institutionalized stupidity at worst.

Russian scientists: Dmitri Mendeleev – creator of the periodic table of elements, Yuri Gagarin – the first human in outer space, Sergei Korolev – father of the space program, Igor Sikorsky – helocopter and aircraft designer, Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen – the Russian officer who discovered Antarctica, Nikolay Basov – laser inventor, Sergei Prokudin-Gorskii – father of colour photography etc. those onle a few.

“I wouldn’t call Buddhism a religion. It is a way of approaching life that really does make a lot of sense.”

So, it is a religion.

“I’m talking about instutionalized religions – this shouldn’t be too hard to grasp. My main point is that Christianity, Islam & Judaism were created by men to consolidate their power, and they have stopped at nothing across the ages to keep people in line.”

That a pretty ugly piece of conjecture. To prove it, you need to be able to read the minds of men and women who have been dead for centuries. Why not just admit now that you are speaking out of hate, not factual information?

Your statements mirror those that homophobes say about GLBTQ people. You are just a bad as any homophobe.

“The world would indeed be better off without organized religion.”

Have you ever heard about East Germany under communist rule? A society without organized religion that set new benchmarks for systemic oppression and brutality. How about the Soviet Union? The history of the 20th century demonstrates that the absence of religion does not hinder, but rather nutures, injustice.

Further, to create your world without organized religion would require oppressing 90% of humanity. That would not be a better world for those people at all.

In fact, it would only be a better world for people caught in the prejudice of atheism, for that world would make them the oppressors of everyone else.

“And it’s absurd that religious people try to pretend that there can be no morality without religion – that is just idiotic.”

Dismissing the observation as “absurd”, “pretense” and “idiotic” means that there is no evidence to support your position.

Atheism has no morality, no ethical system, it intrinsically violates the very foundation of morality and ethics.

Anti-religion folk like yourself like to dismiss the idea ‘there can be no morality without religion’ – which is a strawman anyways, but then consistently validate that premise themselves though their use of deception, their calls to oppress and eradicate religion, and their willingness to subjugate anyone and everyone who has experienced something they claim they have not.

If you ever truly desire to indicate that morality can exist independent of religion, it would serve you well to actually model morality/ethical behavior instead of simply libeling most of humanity.

“On balance, religion is a horrible invention of man.”

In fact, your attempt to portray your lie as ‘on balance’ is an example of how someone lacking religion demonstrates a lack of ethics/morals as well.

On balance, religion is the inspiration and driving force in humanity today toward justice and equality. Your very foundation for criticizing religion – that some of what has been done by people who participated in religions – is based on principles that come from religion. You and your peers do not seem to realize that your very basis for criticizing religion is based on the principles religions, particularly Christianity, teach. Atheism certainly doesn’t provide any reason to acknowledge the intrinsic worth of other people, the truth is it categorically denies the worth of most of humanity. Science alone cannot create any morality or ethical system. And the philosophers all stole their foundational principles from religion.

You call religion an invention, homophobes call homosexuality a choice; same hate different target.

“Christians historically have committed horrible atrocities”

Atheists historically have committed horrible atrocities as the 20th century makes explicitly clear.

But that isn’t the real mistake in your diatribe.

Take those atrocities you blame on Christianity. They were uniformly acted out by men. Shall we declare that “world would indeed be better off without men”?

A huge portion of those atrocities were perpetrated by Europeans. Shall we declare that “world would indeed be better off without Europeans”?

Science and material gain played significant roles in the largest share of history’s atrocities. Shall we declare that “world would indeed be better off without science or material possessions, commerce and trade”?

While religion was one trait that many oppressors in human history have had in common, it is not the only one. Yet you, out of prejudice, select only the one commonality that suits your agenda, ignoring the fact that that one commonality, at its heart, forbids oppression, injustice and atrocity.

Like any other bigot, you are simply trying to blame everything on the thing you hate, while ignoring just how complex and complicated all of human history has really been.

“I love it when Christians want to pick & choose a few cuddly platitudes from the Bible, and hold them out as though they are enough to base a life upon. How silly!”

Yeah, silly of us to take the core values of something we spend our lives experiencing, and telling the truth about it. It is so much more honest to do as you do, and fabricate a lie about something you haven’t experienced and clearly haven’t studied and hold up as the definition of billions of people’s lives.

“The Bible is full of ridiculous, hateful nonsense – and the Christian voodoo & superstitions are not even compelling. I mean…the Virgin Mary? You’re kidding me, right?”

In other words, you have no idea what you are talking about.

Whenever someone makes the dismissal you’ve made, I know that they have little, if any, education regarding the Bible, and frankly, are inept at critical thinking and have a shaky grasp of the English language as well.

I have a theory about you. I think you personally feel threatened by religious belief because it says that you are not perfect, that you are not the center of the universe, and that you are accountable for your flaws and failings. You denounce religion because if you accept that religion has meaning, you would have to change your life in deep and difficult ways, and I don’t mean sex.

Atheism, your rejection of religion, allows you to be entirely selfish and destructive, because nothing and no one but you matters. That’s why you reject religion.

It’s truly disgusting and horrifying that so many gays on Queerty are cheering up in DEFENSE of Muslim radicals. Have you been lobotomized or is it just an unfortunate genetic predisposition of your ignorant leftist brains to side with ANY devil who opposes the West and the United States? Are we in enemy-of-your-enemy-is-your-friend type of mental delusion again? In either case, if you are gay person AND you love Muslim radicals, you are a scum of this planet, and shame on you, and I will have my laugh when your ass gets publicly executed on the streets of Tehran or Islamabad! But I’m pretty sure it won’t happen as you are much of a coward to proclaim your gayness in a Muslim society.

Sure, you enjoy that freedom in the West to blame and bash white people, western culture, Christianity, freedom of though and expression. You have the luxury to take the same-sex issue to the court and quite often have a judge’s ruling in your favor, as in most of societies on this planet such turn of events is less probable than breaking the speed of light barrier. I dare you to do the same in the fascist Muslim countries that you adore and defend so much!

Sure, there are gay Muslims. But for every gay Muslim, there is a dozen of gay Christians. Still it doesn’t make Christianity any gay-friendlier. Why then portray Muslims as gay-loving peaceful activists? Did you ask yourself those questions, you ignorant pricks? Are men enough to ask those questions? Or your definition of manhood underwent some drastic changes due to the fact that you no longer have to conform to gender roles?! Fools, ignorant fools!

You forget about Persopolis! The persian FIRST city! Also the emperor was the first guy to accept the jews inside the palace…

Please read up!

AL-

No one is defending Muslim radicals, as no one is defending Fred Phelps. You don’t think that there are ultra-Orthodox, radical Jews that hate gays just as much? You are really reading into this what you wish to read into it.

@AL: Please quote a *single* poster defending Muslim radicals or the murder of gays in the Muslim world. If you can’t, it means you’re talking out of your bottom, and that can’t be a good thing for the people reading you.

He’s right about the Muslims.

And the Mexicans. And to the loftiest among you, before you jumpt up from your keyboards and grab your anti-discrimination protest signs, spend a Friday or Saturday night or hell, ANY night in the arcade of your local dirty bookstore, and see if you don’t come to agree. The later it becomes, the further South of the border the clientele slide.

Moral comparison at its worst. Christianity preaches love, compassion and justice. Islam teaches the opposite. Those “Christians” you mentioned must not have been true Christians because they so totally went against Jesus’s real teachings. However, Islam preaches supremacy, world domination, subjugation of women and sexual minorities, hatred and slaughter of Jews/Christians/infidels, polyamy, pedophilia and killing anyone who leaves Islam. This has been going on since Mohammed started this evil religion over 1400 years ago. Educate yourself and visit Jihadwatch.org, Atlasshrugs.com, and religionofpeace.com@J:

“I love it when Christians want to pick & choose a few cuddly platitudes from the Bible, and hold them out as though they are enough to base a life upon. How silly!”

Yeah, silly of us to take the core values of something we spend our lives experiencing, and telling the truth about it. It is so much more honest to do as you do, and fabricate a lie about something you haven’t experienced and clearly haven’t studied and hold up as the definition of billions of people’s lives.

“The Bible is full of ridiculous, hateful nonsense – and the Christian voodoo & superstitions are not even compelling. I mean…the Virgin Mary? You’re kidding me, right?”

In other words, you have no idea what you are talking about.

Whenever someone makes the dismissal you’ve made, I know that they have little, if any, education regarding the Bible, and frankly, are inept at critical thinking and have a shaky grasp of the English language as well.

I have a theory about you. I think you personally feel threatened by religious belief because it says that you are not perfect, that you are not the center of the universe, and that you are accountable for your flaws and failings. You denounce religion because if you accept that religion has meaning, you would have to change your life in deep and difficult ways, and I don’t mean sex.

Atheism, your rejection of religion, allows you to be entirely selfish and destructive, because nothing and no one but you matters. That’s why you reject religion.

“I wouldn’t call Buddhism a religion. It is a way of approaching life that really does make a lot of sense.”

So, it is a religion.

“I’m talking about instutionalized religions – this shouldn’t be too hard to grasp. My main point is that Christianity, Islam & Judaism were created by men to consolidate their power, and they have stopped at nothing across the ages to keep people in line.”

That a pretty ugly piece of conjecture. To prove it, you need to be able to read the minds of men and women who have been dead for centuries. Why not just admit now that you are speaking out of hate, not factual information?

Your statements mirror those that homophobes say about GLBTQ people. You are just a bad as any homophobe.

“The world would indeed be better off without organized religion.”

Have you ever heard about East Germany under communist rule? A society without organized religion that set new benchmarks for systemic oppression and brutality. How about the Soviet Union? The history of the 20th century demonstrates that the absence of religion does not hinder, but rather nutures, injustice.

Further, to create your world without organized religion would require oppressing 90% of humanity. That would not be a better world for those people at all.

In fact, it would only be a better world for people caught in the prejudice of atheism, for that world would make them the oppressors of everyone else.

“And it’s absurd that religious people try to pretend that there can be no morality without religion – that is just idiotic.”

Dismissing the observation as “absurd”, “pretense” and “idiotic” means that there is no evidence to support your position.

Atheism has no morality, no ethical system, it intrinsically violates the very foundation of morality and ethics.

Anti-religion folk like yourself like to dismiss the idea ‘there can be no morality without religion’ – which is a strawman anyways, but then consistently validate that premise themselves though their use of deception, their calls to oppress and eradicate religion, and their willingness to subjugate anyone and everyone who has experienced something they claim they have not.

If you ever truly desire to indicate that morality can exist independent of religion, it would serve you well to actually model morality/ethical behavior instead of simply libeling most of humanity.

“On balance, religion is a horrible invention of man.”

In fact, your attempt to portray your lie as ‘on balance’ is an example of how someone lacking religion demonstrates a lack of ethics/morals as well.

On balance, religion is the inspiration and driving force in humanity today toward justice and equality. Your very foundation for criticizing religion – that some of what has been done by people who participated in religions – is based on principles that come from religion. You and your peers do not seem to realize that your very basis for criticizing religion is based on the principles religions, particularly Christianity, teach. Atheism certainly doesn’t provide any reason to acknowledge the intrinsic worth of other people, the truth is it categorically denies the worth of most of humanity. Science alone cannot create any morality or ethical system. And the philosophers all stole their foundational principles from religion.

You call religion an invention, homophobes call homosexuality a choice; same hate different target.

What has porn contributed to civilization over the centuries?

Over than generating wealth for a few by exploiting people.

No. 106 · indeed wrote, “spend a Friday or Saturday night or hell, ANY night in the arcade of your local dirty bookstore, and see if you don’t come to agree. The later it becomes, the further South of the border the clientele slide.”

Just out of curiosity, is this the voice of experience – someone who has spent enough time in a “local dirty bookstore” to collect enough statistical data on the clientele?

@B. #111 As usual you asked a great question. The question I’ll add is why does it matter how many “Mexicans” frequent the “book shop”? Their financial support helps keep a local business thriving. That’s good for the economy !

I wonder if the “researcher” can distinguish a “Mexican” from other Hispanics. A Honduran might be hard to pick out in a cround. Wonder also whether the survey included the thriving Latvian and Croatian communities in the final totals :-}

Michael Lucas is correct. Here is a European perspective:
- Amsterdam is no longer safe for gay men to walk openly, hand-in-hand in the street because of the large number of vicious attacks by Muslim street gangs. The NL was a traditionally liberal, progressive country of equal rights for all. Dutch liberal culture is now under attack after wave after wave of Muslim immigration from countries which have no historical link whatsoever with the NL (mainly Morocco). THere is massive gay flight and Jewish flight from large Dutch cities. Two high profile figures – politician Pim Fortujn and writer Theo van Gogh – have been assassinated for criticizing Islam in the last few years: the first political assassinations in the Netherlands for more than 400 years.
- a recent poll of Muslim attitudes about social issues in the UK revealed that 0% of respondents – yes, I repeat 0%! – thought that homosexuality should be legal in the UK.
- in 2005 in Antwerp, Belgium, local Muslim vigilantes – under the guidance of the AEL (Arab European League) started to patrol the streets to protect ‘Muslim youth’ from ‘police intimidation’. At the same time, the local Jewish community was warned publicly by the AEL that an “atrocity” would occur against them if they did not publicly criticize Israel.
- the famous ‘car burnings’ in France a couple of years ago during which for several weeks, thousands of cars were burned every night by groups of Muslim youths, were just a spike in an ongoing low level rioting that results in hundreds of cars per night being torched in France every day.
- when a Danish magazine published cartoons of Mohammed a couple of years ago, the cartoonist was threatenned with death, had to go into hiding and there were riots around the world.

Yes, there are particular problems in western counties caused by extreme Islamic fundamentalists, but there is a low-level social was between Islam and gays, Jews, women and other religions in every country.

No. 112 · Jeffree wrote, “@B. #111 As usual you asked a great question. The question I’ll add is why does it matter how many ‘Mexicans’ frequent the ‘book shop’?”

No idea if he can tell they are Mexicans (it’s possible to tell but you have to be sufficiently fluent in Spanish to pick up on vocabulary differences between various Spanish-speaking countries, which people who are native Spanish speakers tell me they can do).

Aside from that, though, if he isn’t making it up completely, a significant number of restaurant workers (in California) are Spanish-speaking immigrants and they tend to get off work after the restaurants close for the evening. It wouldn’t be surprising if that caused a late-evening peak in the hispanic clientele of the “book store”, but that doesn’t mean the hispanic population is any more likely to go there than any other group. So, the solution if he thinks there are too many Mexicans going to these bookstores is for him to get a night job at a restaurant so a hispanic worker can have earlier hours.

Criticizing Islam is no different than criticizing Nazism, Fascism, Communism, or the KKK. It is a hate group, plain and simple. Their contributions to society occurred MILLENNIA ago. Michael Lucas is right and so are all the other critics of Islam in this thread. If Muslims were white Southerners you quislings would make Hitler look like Martin Luther King, Jr. And you’d probably support Hitler if he had left gays alone.

And I hate Christianity almost as much as I hate Islam (and note that I referred not to the people but their hate groups). And I object to you lumping in Judaism with them. Consider the fact that no amount of orthodox Jewish homophobia could keep the Israeli Knesset from legalizing homosexuality in 1988, a good 15 years prior to Lawrence v. Texas. And consider the prevalence of anti-semitism among Christians and Muslims despite their Judaic roots (not to mention the cognitive dissonance of Christians worshipping a Jew while condemning all others). Also consider that Conservative synagogues are opening up to gays, while Reform and Reconstructionist Judaism are largely pro-gay. It is Orthodox Judaism that resists any attempts to include gay people. Also consider how little power the Jews have had over anything throughout history, despite the claims of anti-semites. Blaming Judaism for the millennia of war crimes of Christianity and Islam is like blaming Alfred Hitchcock for the Hitchcock-knockoff films of Brian DePalma.

Just because there are self-proclaimed gay Muslims and gay Christians does not absolve Islam or Christianity for their genocidal homophobia. Nor does the existence of gay orthodox Jews let Orthodox Judaism off the hook for its homophobia, but the damage done has been considerably less.

@Chitown Kev: I wouldn’t call Buddhism a religion. It is a way of approaching life that really does make a lot of sense.

@Otis Criblecoblis: If you seriously believe that Buddhism is better than any other religious faith and that it’s had no problems, brother-have I got some news for you!

Along with the blood drenched landscape of religious conflict there is the experience of inner peace and solace that every religion promises, none more so than Buddhism. Standing in marked contrast to the intolerant savagery of other religions, Buddhism is neither fanatical nor dogmatic–so say its adherents. For many of them Buddhism is less a theology and more a meditative and investigative discipline intended to promote an inner harmony and enlightenment while directing us to a path of right living. Generally, the spiritual focus is not only on oneself but on the welfare of others. One tries to put aside egoistic pursuits and gain a deeper understanding of one’s connection to all people and things. “Socially engaged Buddhism” tries to blend individual liberation with responsible social action in order to build an enlightened society.
A glance at history, however, reveals that not all the many and widely varying forms of Buddhism have been free of doctrinal fanaticism, nor free of the violent and exploitative pursuits so characteristic of other religions. In Sri Lanka there is a legendary and almost sacred recorded history about the triumphant battles waged by Buddhist kings of yore. During the twentieth century, Buddhists clashed violently with each other and with non-Buddhists in Thailand, Burma, Korea, Japan, India, and elsewhere. In Sri Lanka, armed battles between Buddhist Sinhalese and Hindu Tamils have taken many lives on both sides. In 1998 the U.S. State Department listed thirty of the world’s most violent and dangerous extremist groups. Over half of them were religious, specifically Muslim, Jewish, and Buddhist.
In South Korea, in 1998, thousands of monks of the Chogye Buddhist order fought each other with fists, rocks, fire-bombs, and clubs, in pitched battles that went on for weeks. They were vying for control of the order, the largest in South Korea, with its annual budget of $9.2 million, its millions of dollars worth of property, and the privilege of appointing 1,700 monks to various offices. The brawls damaged the main Buddhist sanctuaries and left dozens of monks injured, some seriously. The Korean public appeared to disdain both factions, feeling that no matter what side took control, “it would use worshippers’ donations for luxurious houses and expensive cars.”
As with any religion, squabbles between or within Buddhist sects are often fueled by the material corruption and personal deficiencies of the leadership. For example, in Nagano, Japan, at Zenkoji, the prestigious complex of temples that has hosted Buddhist sects for more than 1,400 years, “a nasty battle” arose between Komatsu the chief priest and the Tacchu, a group of temples nominally under the chief priest’s sway. The Tacchu monks accused Komatsu of selling writings and drawings under the temple’s name for his own gain. They also were appalled by the frequency with which he was seen in the company of women. Komatsu in turn sought to isolate and punish monks who were critical of his leadership. The conflict lasted some five years and made it into the courts.
But what of Tibetan Buddhism? Is it not an exception to this sort of strife? And what of the society it helped to create? Many Buddhists maintain that, before the Chinese crackdown in 1959, old Tibet was a spiritually oriented kingdom free from the egotistical lifestyles, empty materialism, and corrupting vices that beset modern industrialized society. Western news media, travel books, novels, and Hollywood films have portrayed the Tibetan theocracy as a veritable Shangri-La. The Dalai Lama himself stated that “the pervasive influence of Buddhism” in Tibet, “amid the wide open spaces of an unspoiled environment resulted in a society dedicated to peace and harmony. We enjoyed freedom and contentment.”
A reading of Tibet’s history suggests a somewhat different picture. “Religious conflict was commonplace in old Tibet,” writes one western Buddhist practitioner. “History belies the Shangri-La image of Tibetan lamas and their followers living together in mutual tolerance and nonviolent goodwill. Indeed, the situation was quite different. Old Tibet was much more like Europe during the religious wars of the Counterreformation.” In the thirteenth century, Emperor Kublai Khan created the first Grand Lama, who was to preside over all the other lamas as might a pope over his bishops. Several centuries later, the Emperor of China sent an army into Tibet to support the Grand Lama, an ambitious 25-year-old man, who then gave himself the title of Dalai (Ocean) Lama, ruler of all Tibet.
His two previous lama “incarnations” were then retroactively recognized as his predecessors, thereby transforming the 1st Dalai Lama into the 3rd Dalai Lama. This 1st (or 3rd) Dalai Lama seized monasteries that did not belong to his sect, and is believed to have destroyed Buddhist writings that conflicted with his claim to divinity. The Dalai Lama who succeeded him pursued a sybaritic life, enjoying many mistresses, partying with friends, and acting in other ways deemed unfitting for an incarnate deity. For these transgressions he was murdered by his priests. Within 170 years, despite their recognized divine status, five Dalai Lamas were killed by their high priests or other courtiers.
For hundreds of years competing Tibetan Buddhist sects engaged in bitterly violent clashes and summary executions. In 1660, the 5th Dalai Lama was faced with a rebellion in Tsang province, the stronghold of the rival Kagyu sect with its high lama known as the Karmapa. The 5th Dalai Lama called for harsh retribution against the rebels, directing the Mongol army to obliterate the male and female lines, and the offspring too, “like eggs smashed against rocks…. In short, annihilate any traces of them, even their names.”
In 1792, many Kagyu monasteries were confiscated and their monks were forcibly converted to the Gelug sect (the Dalai Lama’s denomination). The Gelug school, known also as the “Yellow Hats,” showed little tolerance or willingness to mix their teachings with other Buddhist sects. In the words of one of their traditional prayers: “Praise to you, violent god of the Yellow Hat teachings/who reduces to particles of dust/ great beings, high officials and ordinary people/ who pollute and corrupt the Gelug doctrine.” An eighteenth-century memoir of a Tibetan general depicts sectarian strife among Buddhists that is as brutal and bloody as any religious conflict might be. This grim history remains largely unvisited by present-day followers of Tibetan Buddhism in the West.
Religions have had a close relationship not only with violence but with economic exploitation. Indeed, it is often the economic exploitation that necessitates the violence. Such was the case with the Tibetan theocracy. Until 1959, when the Dalai Lama last presided over Tibet, most of the arable land was still organized into manorial estates worked by serfs. These estates were owned by two social groups: the rich secular landlords and the rich theocratic lamas. Even a writer sympathetic to the old order allows that “a great deal of real estate belonged to the monasteries, and most of them amassed great riches.” Much of the wealth was accumulated “through active participation in trade, commerce, and money lending.”
Drepung monastery was one of the biggest landowners in the world, with its 185 manors, 25,000 serfs, 300 great pastures, and 16,000 herdsmen. The wealth of the monasteries rested in the hands of small numbers of high-ranking lamas. Most ordinary monks lived modestly and had no direct access to great wealth. The Dalai Lama himself “lived richly in the 1000-room, 14-story Potala Palace.”
Secular leaders also did well. A notable example was the commander-in-chief of the Tibetan army, a member of the Dalai Lama’s lay Cabinet, who owned 4,000 square kilometers of land and 3,500 serfs. 12 Old Tibet has been misrepresented by some Western admirers as “a nation that required no police force because its people voluntarily observed the laws of karma.” In fact. it had a professional army, albeit a small one, that served mainly as a gendarmerie for the landlords to keep order, protect their property, and hunt down runaway serfs.
Young Tibetan boys were regularly taken from their peasant families and brought into the monasteries to be trained as monks. Once there, they were bonded for life. Tashì-Tsering, a monk, reports that it was common for peasant children to be sexually mistreated in the monasteries. He himself was a victim of repeated rape, beginning at age nine. The monastic estates also conscripted children for lifelong servitude as domestics, dance performers, and soldiers.
In old Tibet there were small numbers of farmers who subsisted as a kind of free peasantry, and perhaps an additional 10,000 people who composed the “middle-class” families of merchants, shopkeepers, and small traders. Thousands of others were beggars. There also were slaves, usually domestic servants, who owned nothing. Their offspring were born into slavery. The majority of the rural population were serfs. Treated little better than slaves, the serfs went without schooling or medical care, They were under a lifetime bond to work the lord’s land–or the monastery’s land–without pay, to repair the lord’s houses, transport his crops, and collect his firewood. They were also expected to provide carrying animals and transportation on demand.16 Their masters told them what crops to grow and what animals to raise. They could not get married without the consent of their lord or lama. And they might easily be separated from their families should their owners lease them out to work in a distant location.
As in a free labor system and unlike slavery, the overlords had no responsibility for the serf’s maintenance and no direct interest in his or her survival as an expensive piece of property. The serfs had to support themselves. Yet as in a slave system, they were bound to their masters, guaranteeing a fixed and permanent workforce that could neither organize nor strike nor freely depart as might laborers in a market context. The overlords had the best of both worlds.
One 22-year old woman, herself a runaway serf, reports: “Pretty serf girls were usually taken by the owner as house servants and used as he wished”; they “were just slaves without rights.” Serfs needed permission to go anywhere. Landowners had legal authority to capture those who tried to flee. One 24-year old runaway welcomed the Chinese intervention as a “liberation.” He testified that under serfdom he was subjected to incessant toil, hunger, and cold. After his third failed escape, he was merciless beaten by the landlord’s men until blood poured from his nose and mouth. They then poured alcohol and caustic soda on his wounds to increase the pain, he claimed.
The serfs were taxed upon getting married, taxed for the birth of each child and for every death in the family. They were taxed for planting a tree in their yard and for keeping animals. They were taxed for religious festivals and for public dancing and drumming, for being sent to prison and upon being released. Those who could not find work were taxed for being unemployed, and if they traveled to another village in search of work, they paid a passage tax. When people could not pay, the monasteries lent them money at 20 to 50 percent interest. Some debts were handed down from father to son to grandson. Debtors who could not meet their obligations risked being cast into slavery.
The theocracy’s religious teachings buttressed its class order. The poor and afflicted were taught that they had brought their troubles upon themselves because of their wicked ways in previous lives. Hence they had to accept the misery of their present existence as a karmic atonement and in anticipation that their lot would improve in their next lifetime. The rich and powerful treated their good fortune as a reward for, and tangible evidence of, virtue in past and present lives.
The Tibetan serfs were something more than superstitious victims, blind to their own oppression. As we have seen, some ran away; others openly resisted, sometimes suffering dire consequences. In feudal Tibet, torture and mutilation–including eye gouging, the pulling out of tongues, hamstringing, and amputation–were favored punishments inflicted upon thieves, and runaway or resistant serfs. Journeying through Tibet in the 1960s, Stuart and Roma Gelder interviewed a former serf, Tsereh Wang Tuei, who had stolen two sheep belonging to a monastery. For this he had both his eyes gouged out and his hand mutilated beyond use. He explains that he no longer is a Buddhist: “When a holy lama told them to blind me I thought there was no good in religion.” Since it was against Buddhist teachings to take human life, some offenders were severely lashed and then “left to God” in the freezing night to die. “The parallels between Tibet and medieval Europe are striking,” concludes Tom Grunfeld in his book on Tibet.
In 1959, Anna Louise Strong visited an exhibition of torture equipment that had been used by the Tibetan overlords. There were handcuffs of all sizes, including small ones for children, and instruments for cutting off noses and ears, gouging out eyes, breaking off hands, and hamstringing legs. There were hot brands, whips, and special implements for disemboweling. The exhibition presented photographs and testimonies of victims who had been blinded or crippled or suffered amputations for thievery. There was the shepherd whose master owed him a reimbursement in yuan and wheat but refused to pay. So he took one of the master’s cows; for this he had his hands severed. Another herdsman, who opposed having his wife taken from him by his lord, had his hands broken off. There were pictures of Communist activists with noses and upper lips cut off, and a woman who was raped and then had her nose sliced away.
Earlier visitors to Tibet commented on the theocratic despotism. In 1895, an Englishman, Dr. A. L. Waddell, wrote that the populace was under the “intolerable tyranny of monks” and the devil superstitions they had fashioned to terrorize the people. In 1904 Perceval Landon described the Dalai Lama’s rule as “an engine of oppression.” At about that time, another English traveler, Captain W.F.T. O’Connor, observed that “the great landowners and the priests… exercise each in their own dominion a despotic power from which there is no appeal,” while the people are “oppressed by the most monstrous growth of monasticism and priest-craft.” Tibetan rulers “invented degrading legends and stimulated a spirit of superstition” among the common people. In 1937, another visitor, Spencer Chapman, wrote, “The Lamaist monk does not spend his time in ministering to the people or educating them. . . . The beggar beside the road is nothing to the monk. Knowledge is the jealously guarded prerogative of the monasteries and is used to increase their influence and wealth.” As much as we might wish otherwise, feudal theocratic Tibet was a far cry from the romanticized Shangri La so enthusiastically nurtured by Buddhism’s western proselytes.

II. Secularization vs. Spirituality
What happened to Tibet after the Chinese Communists moved into the country in 1951? The treaty of that year provided for ostensible self-governance under the Dalai Lama’s rule but gave China military control and exclusive right to conduct foreign relations. The Chinese were also granted a direct role in internal administration “to promote social reforms.” Among the earliest changes they wrought was to reduce usurious interest rates, and build a few hospitals and roads. At first, they moved slowly, relying mostly on persuasion in an attempt to effect reconstruction. No aristocratic or monastic property was confiscated, and feudal lords continued to reign over their hereditarily bound peasants. “Contrary to popular belief in the West,” claims one observer, the Chinese “took care to show respect for Tibetan culture and religion.”
Over the centuries the Tibetan lords and lamas had seen Chinese come and go, and had enjoyed good relations with Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek and his reactionary Kuomintang rule in China. The approval of the Kuomintang government was needed to validate the choice of the Dalai Lama and Panchen Lama. When the current 14th Dalai Lama was first installed in Lhasa, it was with an armed escort of Chinese troops and an attending Chinese minister, in accordance with centuries-old tradition. What upset the Tibetan lords and lamas in the early 1950s was that these latest Chinese were Communists. It would be only a matter of time, they feared, before the Communists started imposing their collectivist egalitarian schemes upon Tibet.
The issue was joined in 1956-57, when armed Tibetan bands ambushed convoys of the Chinese Peoples Liberation Army. The uprising received extensive assistance from the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), including military training, support camps in Nepal, and numerous airlifts.27 Meanwhile in the United States, the American Society for a Free Asia, a CIA-financed front, energetically publicized the cause of Tibetan resistance, with the Dalai Lama’s eldest brother, Thubtan Norbu, playing an active role in that organization. The Dalai Lama’s second-eldest brother, Gyalo Thondup, established an intelligence operation with the CIA as early as 1951. He later upgraded it into a CIA-trained guerrilla unit whose recruits parachuted back into Tibet.
Many Tibetan commandos and agents whom the CIA dropped into the country were chiefs of aristocratic clans or the sons of chiefs. Ninety percent of them were never heard from again, according to a report from the CIA itself, meaning they were most likely captured and killed. “Many lamas and lay members of the elite and much of the Tibetan army joined the uprising, but in the main the populace did not, assuring its failure,” writes Hugh Deane. In their book on Tibet, Ginsburg and Mathos reach a similar conclusion: “As far as can be ascertained, the great bulk of the common people of Lhasa and of the adjoining countryside failed to join in the fighting against the Chinese both when it first began and as it progressed.”Eventually the resistance crumbled.

Whatever wrongs and new oppressions introduced by the Chinese after 1959, they did abolish slavery and the Tibetan serfdom system of unpaid labor. They eliminated the many crushing taxes, started work projects, and greatly reduced unemployment and beggary. They established secular schools, thereby breaking the educational monopoly of the monasteries. And they constructed running water and electrical systems in Lhasa.
Heinrich Harrer (later revealed to have been a sergeant in Hitler’s SS) wrote a bestseller about his experiences in Tibet that was made into a popular Hollywood movie. He reported that the Tibetans who resisted the Chinese “were predominantly nobles, semi-nobles and lamas; they were punished by being made to perform the lowliest tasks, such as laboring on roads and bridges. They were further humiliated by being made to clean up the city before the tourists arrived.” They also had to live in a camp originally reserved for beggars and vagrants–all of which Harrer treats as sure evidence of the dreadful nature of the Chinese occupation.
By 1961, Chinese occupation authorities expropriated the landed estates owned by lords and lamas. They distributed many thousands of acres to tenant farmers and landless peasants, reorganizing them into hundreds of communes.. Herds once owned by nobility were turned over to collectives of poor shepherds. Improvements were made in the breeding of livestock, and new varieties of vegetables and new strains of wheat and barley were introduced, along with irrigation improvements, all of which reportedly led to an increase in agrarian production.
Many peasants remained as religious as ever, giving alms to the clergy. But monks who had been conscripted as children into the religious orders were now free to renounce the monastic life, and thousands did, especially the younger ones. The remaining clergy lived on modest government stipends and extra income earned by officiating at prayer services, weddings, and funerals.35
Both the Dalai Lama and his advisor and youngest brother, Tendzin Choegyal, claimed that “more than 1.2 million Tibetans are dead as a result of the Chinese occupation.” The official 1953 census–six years before the Chinese crackdown–recorded the entire population residing in Tibet at 1,274,000.37 Other census counts put the population within Tibet at about two million. If the Chinese killed 1.2 million in the early 1960s then almost all of Tibet, would have been depopulated, transformed into a killing field dotted with death camps and mass graves–of which we have no evidence. The thinly distributed Chinese force in Tibet could not have rounded up, hunted down, and exterminated that many people even if it had spent all its time doing nothing else.
Chinese authorities claim to have put an end to floggings, mutilations, and amputations as a form of criminal punishment. They themselves, however, have been charged with acts of brutality by exile Tibetans. The authorities do admit to “mistakes,” particularly during the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution when the persecution of religious beliefs reached a high tide in both China and Tibet. After the uprising in the late 1950s, thousands of Tibetans were incarcerated. During the Great Leap Forward, forced collectivization and grain farming were imposed on the Tibetan peasantry, sometimes with disastrous effect on production. In the late 1970s, China began relaxing controls “and tried to undo some of the damage wrought during the previous two decades.”
In 1980, the Chinese government initiated reforms reportedly designed to grant Tibet a greater degree of self-rule and self-administration. Tibetans would now be allowed to cultivate private plots, sell their harvest surpluses, decide for themselves what crops to grow, and keep yaks and sheep. Communication with the outside world was again permitted, and frontier controls were eased to permit some Tibetans to visit exiled relatives in India and Nepal. By the 1980s many of the principal lamas had begun to shuttle back and forth between China and the exile communities abroad, “restoring their monasteries in Tibet and helping to revitalize Buddhism there.”
As of 2007 Tibetan Buddhism was still practiced widely and tolerated by officialdom. Religious pilgrimages and other standard forms of worship were allowed but within limits. All monks and nuns had to sign a loyalty pledge that they would not use their religious position to foment secession or dissent. And displaying photos of the Dalai Lama was declared illegal.
In the 1990s, the Han, the ethnic group comprising over 95 percent of China’s immense population, began moving in substantial numbers into Tibet. On the streets of Lhasa and Shigatse, signs of Han colonization are readily visible. Chinese run the factories and many of the shops and vending stalls. Tall office buildings and large shopping centers have been built with funds that might have been better spent on water treatment plants and housing. Chinese cadres in Tibet too often view their Tibetan neighbors as backward and lazy, in need of economic development and “patriotic education.” During the 1990s Tibetan government employees suspected of harboring nationalist sympathies were purged from office, and campaigns were once again launched to discredit the Dalai Lama. Individual Tibetans reportedly were subjected to arrest, imprisonment, and forced labor for carrying out separatist activities and engaging in “political subversion.” Some were held in administrative detention without adequate food, water, and blankets, subjected to threats, beatings, and other mistreatment.
Tibetan history, culture, and certainly religion are slighted in schools. Teaching materials, though translated into Tibetan, focus mainly on Chinese history and culture. Chinese family planning regulations allow a three-child limit for Tibetan families. (There is only a one-child limit for Han families throughout China, and a two-child limit for rural Han families whose first child is a girl.) If a Tibetan couple goes over the three-child limit, the excess children can be denied subsidized daycare, health care, housing, and education. These penalties have been enforced irregularly and vary by district. None of these child services, it should be noted, were available to Tibetans before the Chinese takeover.

For the rich lamas and secular lords, the Communist intervention was an unmitigated calamity. Most of them fled abroad, as did the Dalai Lama himself, who was assisted in his flight by the CIA. Some discovered to their horror that they would have to work for a living. Many, however, escaped that fate. Throughout the 1960s, the Tibetan exile community was secretly pocketing $1.7 million a year from the CIA, according to documents released by the State Department in 1998. Once this fact was publicized, the Dalai Lama’s organization itself issued a statement admitting that it had received millions of dollars from the CIA during the 1960s to send armed squads of exiles into Tibet to undermine the Maoist revolution. The Dalai Lama’s annual payment from the CIA was $186,000. Indian intelligence also financed both him and other Tibetan exiles. He has refused to say whether he or his brothers worked for the CIA. The agency has also declined to comment.
In 1995, the News & Observer of Raleigh, North Carolina, carried a front page color photograph of the Dalai Lama being embraced by the reactionary Republican senator Jesse Helms, under the headline “Buddhist Captivates Hero of Religious Right.” In April 1999, along with Margaret Thatcher, Pope John Paul II, and the first George Bush, the Dalai Lama called upon the British government to release Augusto Pinochet, the former fascist dictator of Chile and a longtime CIA client who was visiting England. The Dalai Lama urged that Pinochet not be forced to go to Spain where he was wanted to stand trial for crimes against humanity.
Into the twenty-first century, via the National Endowment for Democracy and other conduits that are more respectable sounding than the CIA, the U.S. Congress continued to allocate an annual $2 million to Tibetans in India, with additional millions for “democracy activities” within the Tibetan exile community. In addition to these funds, the Dalai Lama received money from financier George Soros.
Whatever the Dalai Lama’s associations with the CIA and various reactionaries, he did speak often of peace, love, and nonviolence. He himself really cannot be blamed for the abuses of Tibet’s ancien régime, having been but 25 years old when he fled into exile. In a 1994 interview, he went on record as favoring the building of schools and roads in his country. He said the corvée (forced unpaid serf labor) and certain taxes imposed on the peasants were “extremely bad.” And he disliked the way people were saddled with old debts sometimes passed down from generation to generation.During the half century of living in the western world, he had embraced concepts such as human rights and religious freedom, ideas largely unknown in old Tibet. He even proposed democracy for Tibet, featuring a written constitution and a representative assembly.
In 1996, the Dalai Lama issued a statement that must have had an unsettling effect on the exile community. It read in part: “Marxism is founded on moral principles, while capitalism is concerned only with gain and profitability.” Marxism fosters “the equitable utilization of the means of production” and cares about “the fate of the working classes” and “the victims of . . . exploitation. For those reasons the system appeals to me, and . . . I think of myself as half-Marxist, half-Buddhist.
But he also sent a reassuring message to “those who live in abundance”: “It is a good thing to be rich… Those are the fruits for deserving actions, the proof that they have been generous in the past.” And to the poor he offers this admonition: “There is no good reason to become bitter and rebel against those who have property and fortune… It is better to develop a positive attitude.”
In 2005 the Dalai Lama signed a widely advertised statement along with ten other Nobel Laureates supporting the “inalienable and fundamental human right” of working people throughout the world to form labor unions to protect their interests, in accordance with the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In many countries “this fundamental right is poorly protected and in some it is explicitly banned or brutally suppressed,” the statement read. Burma, China, Colombia, Bosnia, and a few other countries were singled out as among the worst offenders. Even the United States “fails to adequately protect workers’ rights to form unions and bargain collectively. Millions of U.S. workers lack any legal protection to form unions….”
The Dalai Lama also gave full support to removing the ingrained traditional obstacles that have kept Tibetan nuns from receiving an education. Upon arriving in exile, few nuns could read or write. In Tibet their activities had been devoted to daylong periods of prayer and chants. But in northern India they now began reading Buddhist philosophy and engaging in theological study and debate, activities that in old Tibet had been open only to monks.

Friendly Feudalism: The Tibet Myth

@PLAYS WELL WITH OTHERS:
Have to agree. Muslims come in many flavors and strengths but in the end their religion is wired to discriminate. So are christianists, catholics, etc, etc.
We need to stop trying to reason with the unreasonable. It will never work. They will never accept us.

Hello all! Just read “Why I Am Not a Muslim” to gain some perspective. Read the Quran. It’s not a religion, it’s a political movement. Many like me left the cult courageously. Don’t make light of our struggle. I agree with him, that silence will be our fault and truth is our responsibility. Use your intelligence. Inform yourselves about the atrocities occurring by Muslims against non-Muslims: rapes of non-Muslims in Western countries by mostly Pakistanis; gay bashings by Muslims; hangings of gays, political dissidents, etc. and of course suicide bombings. Political correctness is just ignorance. Unless you are ready to surrender what you value in the Western world so you and your children live in the 8th century again…..inform yourself, NOW!
THERE ARE TWO KINDS OF PEOPLE IN THIS WORLD: THOSE THAT HATE AND DESTROY; THOSE THAT LOVE AND CREATE. Jose Marti. [I read and observe only hate and destruction when I study what is called Islam and the Muslims.]

@Xtian99: Good for you! Stand up to this idiot queens all high on their Ecstasy totally delusional as to what this political correctness means for them. If you get a chance read my posting. Joe S

@Snottyboy: It’s not that they won’t ACCEPT us, it is written over and over again in the Quran that they must KILL us or once they have conquered us, then TAX us to realize our inferiority and their superiority. It’s amazing that our media in all its forms does not have the courage to stand up and tell the truth about the Islamic political movement. I guess the brain dead would rather hear about the gossip of all the Hollywood stars. We will pay for this idiocy one day if we don’t remain alert and informed. Give me liberty or give me death. Remember who said that?

this bitch needs attention…
i never would take words from someone who uses men’s bodies to make money… it’s another kind of slavery…

Lucas bitch, u can kiss my ass,
also, remember that in few years (doing what u doing) will make u wear diappers.

What the hell is Lucas prattling? ;SSS stupid Jew, show some respect man!! I am a BISEXUAL MUSLIM! This really made me mad :’O
I think i’ll watch his movies less ;) as an act of protest!

He shows how stupid he is because he needs attention! ATTENTION WHORE! :p

Also I want to say that I’d love to FUCK Lucas so bad … not because he’s that sexy..no he isn’t sexy at all… but as a type of punishment for what he said about the muslims Ö
(he is ugly, he has done so much plastic surgery that he isn’t natural anymore, and he is a russian bitch!)

He claims to tell the truth but everything that he says is FALSE and subjective!!
NEVER TALK IN GENERAL OK BITCH? …AND LEARN TO SHUT UP ;)
It’s not that you’re running a porn company that u got to think that you got some power aight! Ur nothing…

OK i’m so pissed off right now that I forgot my words :S
pfff hopefully he apologizes a.s.a.p. !!!
‘Cause he’s losing so many fans right over there!!

PEACE
-.-

@PLAYS WELL WITH OTHERS: Of course this never happens in good Christian countries like Zimbabwe, Uganda, Jamaica…. well, to be fair we haven’t heard about homophobic death squads in Argentina for about 20 years.

Muslims are the most wicked people on Earth. And why they blame christians for other killings in the world?, muslims killed more people in the world than christians and jews combined. and what christians did was past and not future but muslims from the time, they flourished in 7th century, the real religious massacre of human beings started. some idiot posted that we christians use Jesus name to kill ppl. Utter Rubbish. THIS IS ANOTHER BIGGEST MUSLIM LIES AND IT AGAIN PROVES THAT MUSLIMS ARE SUCH A BIG LIARS…Christians never use Jesus name to kill others, Hitler hated christians bcoz of their tolerance and patience and appreciated muslims for their bravery and courage in massacring human beings.

I don’t know, people. I think we’d have all been screwed a long time ago if all those 1.6 billion people turned into bombers all of a sudden, you know? Majorly screwed.

“and what christians did was past and not future but muslims from the time, they flourished in 7th century, the real religious massacre of human beings started. some idiot posted that we christians use Jesus name to kill ppl. Utter Rubbish. ” – George.

Hi, George. Have you ever heard of the Phalangists in Lebanon? There was an Israeli Movie about it Called ‘Waltz with Bashir.’ The Phalangists were a political christian group that carved crosses into the chests of those who weren’t believers in their religion or party. I don’t know of any other figure associated with a cross other than jesus.