While this is not surprising given the murderous homophobia in the Qur'an, I hate when the media goes to these 'community head'.

Does this jerk really represent Albanian Mulsims? I assume Muslims there range from name-only to fire-brand fundamentalist. Besides Islam is a very decentralised religion, so this guy is either self-anointed or chosen by some oligarchy of old men.

This is silly to even note: Albanias Moslem population is only about %9 . I doubt that they will have much aeffect on anything.

But hey, get the Moslems. This gets kind of (almost)racist when we've got worse Christian extremists population signif portion of %94..

@M Shane: It is not racist to call out Muslims on their shit. I am so sick of that mindset. They deserve to be called out just as much as Evangelicals. Who the hell brainwashed you that one group is more off limits than the other 'cause the majority of their skin is darker? Fuck that.

Many Albanians are fair and blond.

One of the major legacies of nearly five centuries of Ottoman rule was that the majority of Albanians, according to Ottoman data, had converted to Islam. Therefore, the nation emerged as nominally Muslim-majority after Albania's independence in November 1912.

Communist rule promoted atheism.

—————————————————————–

"kind of racist"? boy please!!
No one is being racist, only calling on muslims for their hate-filled religion.Not that christians are any better.People die everyday in the name of this religion i'm so done with it.
Not only are they homophobic, the oppress women as well.i have no respect whatsoever for their kind.

Dear douches,
M Shane wasn't saying it's racist to call out Muslims on their violent made-up beliefs. He was saying it's racist to call out Muslims to the exclusion of others. You don't see people calling Christian's violent made-up beliefs "fairy tales" very often, but they're cut from the very same fabricated cloth. And from the sound of it, you're all in agreement. So let's all just be equal opportunity, and call all religions fairy tales every chance we get.

@Chance:
Chance, why do you call those posters "douche"? If you read this site frequently you'd see that there's a ton of criticism of Christian-based hate/violence and a lot of rhetoric about Christian-based "fairy tales." Are you suggesting that every time someone posts a criticism of one group/religion they must include a caveat deriding the evils of every other possible group/religion? These are blog-posts, not dissertations.

@Andrew:

"You don't see people calling Christian's violent made-up beliefs "fairy tales" very often,…"

Yes I do. Very often. And I love it. In this case, his accusations of racism, are absurd (especially considering "Muslim" is not a racial classification).

No. 6 · Chance; Thanks you are right. It doesn't require a disertation to see that the intention behind much of the different criticisms of religious groups is to pull on different sets of sentiments.
I.E in Albania thereare as many Catholics and Orthodox Christians(or slightly more in fact who would as easily find it apaling that gays are getting married. YET; this report is not about all of the religious freaks in Albania, but just about the Moslems, as if they had a reservation on Bigotry or Hate and the others didn't.

The context counts and it's not complicated.
There has been a distorted and perversely ignorant tendancy in the U.S. to push an all around hatred of tanyone froma Moslem Counry and to just assume that they are somehow worse that the demented Christian crusaders here.
Religions are based on faith-blind adherance- -not on anything real-you can have faith in anything if you are crazy enough.and buy into the hate which is preached.
We have no less of a problem than the moslem countries. Indseed, My experience of most Moslem peoples ids that before the U.s. started fucking with them for oil they lived side by side with Jews , Christian Kurds etc apart from extremists. Christians often seem to be all gooing full steam with their hatred.

@Chance: I get what you're saying, although on this site I would say that there is a fairly strong anti-christian sentiment (among other things). But in the general world and media, people do indeed overlook a person's religion when that religion is Christianity.

Just a side note, Muslim may not be a race, but we can't deny that most people hear "Muslim" and think "Arab."

I don't feel the need to criticize christianity every time I criticize islam, nor vice versa. WHat would motivate that? Charges of bias are absurd, and rooted in brown skin. The fact is that because of the enlightenment and secular inroads in explaining the world around us through, say, science, and also the values that are required for that to occur (secular values Re: galileo and the church's shame), christianity has been beaten back from enabling women who are midwives to be burned alive at the stake in western society. Not so in muslim nations, where women are routinely buried up to their necks and stone to death. Have you ever seen one of those occur? I think it's your obligation as someone defending islam by those who criticize it by calling those who criticize racits or bigots to watch that happen–to see for yourself what Islam causes.

@M Shane: All of your assertions seem like pretty gross over-generalizations. As someone stated earlier, just because the Muslim faith was attacked in this particular article, the christian faith is just as deplorable and, unsurprisingly, is attacked elsewhere on this site pretty comprehensively.

I don't give a rats ass about christian fundies or islamic fundies. To me, they are of the same ilk, and should be condemned accordingly regardless of whether the individuals comprising these religions in a particular country are white, black, brown or any other hue.

I don't care about moslem fundies in Iran for instance, and i think they should just go and fist themselves with their korans. Likewise, I feel the same way about the West. Baptist Church members and their loony beliefs. I don't care about either of their "cultures" or their reasons for excluding, condemning and at least in the case of Iran, executing homosexuals. Fuck them, and their religious culture/heritage.

@Elisabeth:

you should see some of the public opinion polling in muslim nations. Many extremely bigoted, backward and primitive values are mainstream. Like death for a woman who opposes her father's arranged marriage.

@M Shane: And, to top it off, I fail to understand what you are suggesting.

A few weeks ago, the Chicago Tribune wrote an article about the HIV/AIDS rate in predominately black homosexual communities in one of the country's largest metropolitan areas. Because these individuals are not white (the article mentioned that HIV/AIDS was at 11% and 12% for white and latino homoseuxuals in the region) but instead focused on a nearly 30% infection rate in the black community – is this racist too? Where are we supposed to draw the line? If we completely try to keep everything "contextualized," as you suggest, newspapers will turn into tomes and we will all be inundated by way more information than is necessary. To be fair, according to your standards, the article should have mentioned how whites and latinos are affected more by other STDs, right, so that everything could be kept "in context" and balanced.

To me, that not only sounds ridiculous from an ideological standpoint (ya know, free speech and all), but also from a pragmatic standpoint as well.

@Chance:
"M Shane wasn't saying it's racist to call out Muslims on their violent made-up beliefs. He was saying it's racist to call out Muslims to the exclusion of others."

That is a totally disingenuous position. Religion is not a race or ethnicity. It is an ideology. More pointedly the Muslims in Albania are European, so you would have a pretty steep task to prove that anyone dislikes them because of their Albanian ancestry rather than their religious beliefs. It may appear single-minded to focus on Islam but your claim about not seeing Christianity criticised here is simply wrong.

The use of the label 'racism' is a cheap political tactic used during the Bush-era where some leftists felt the dire need to shield Muslims from any and all criticism. No one is under any obligation to talk about Christianity, etc. when engaged in criticism of other religions. Islam is the focus of this news story and that is what people respond to.

@M Shane:
"to just assume that they [Muslims] are somehow worse that the demented Christian crusaders here."

Since the only countries in the world which still maintain a death penalty and/or corporeal punishment (e.g. lashings) for homosexuality are in the Muslim world (e.g. Iran, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Malaysia), that is hardly an 'assumption' to deem them "worse".

Yes, there are awful places in the Christian world like Jamaica or Latvia, but even those countries aren't brazen enough to physically attack LGBT as a matter of law/state policy. Only Muslim nations do that in the modern world.

Fifteen new victims of religion and hate in Tel Aviv. Three new deaths.

http://www.queerty.com/shock-3.....-20090801/

All three abrahamic religions – the christers, islamists and judaists are equally guilty of promoting hatred and violence against GLBT folks.

It makes no difference whether its state sponsored or state tolerated, as it clearly is in the US.

Probably the worst case of state sponsored terrorism against GLBT communities is in Iraq, where it's directly and solely caused by the US invasion and occupation. Next on the list would have to be Iran where the regime never ceases to point out that Iran is menaced by US oil pirates to ‘justify’ the oppressive regime of the ayatollahs who relentlessly murder GLBT folks, student, workers, women and trade unionists.

Of course islam is not a race – race is a thoroughly discredited concept. However those who claim that muslim cultures are worse that christer or judaist cultures are racist or doing the dirty work of excusing US genocide in Iraq, And some like tankie are supporters of the oil piracy and zionist ethnic cleaning and apartheid. It’s good that tankie, who wants to use nukes on muslims, is just a discredited blog commenter with no following.