My question to Tribesman is that if he thinks it is acceptable that Raddatz and Hirsi Ali have to hide themself because of threats to their lifes?

Then don't ask silly questions about criticism of his work if you don't like the answer you will get .
It really does you no credit to hold up someones views , invite criticism of them and then complain that his work is criticised .
In fact it shows a serious flaw in your whole approach .



That says it all , when you can describe some fruitcake publications as rational , BTW you left Gates of Vienna off your list , that a really doozy of a "rational" publication

Who said I hate him ?
I said his recent work appears flawed and gets lots of criticism .

Is it just me or is the wind telling the breeze that it blows? :haha:

Since nobody else is asking:
What are YOUR credentials that would make your opinions or views more worth then everybody else's?
Did you get a degree in the appropriate fields, which I think would be: Middle Eastern Studies and History, plus a big chunk of Middle Eastern Philosophy and religious studies.

Knowing some people and reading a book or two do not make anyone a real specialist in any given field. :03:

Opinions on an internet forum are like farts

1. Every a$$hole has em
2. They all stink
3. In polite society they are better kept to your self.

big salute to my dad for teachin me that. :salute:

Opinions are like a$$holes, everybody's got one. :D

Tribesman, again you do not give a single thought, argument, reference, experience, anything that would give you some credit with what you say - if only you would say something. All you do is claiming that others are wrong, and to that you leave it, zig-zagging around like a crazy rabbit in an attempt to distract others from your obvious deficits.

It is not important that you accuse me to be wrong, many people here do that, and if I would not have build a thick skin after staying here for 9 years, I would not be here anymore. But that you accuse known experts - in a field you know nothing about - of not knowing what they talk about, and who in case of Raddatz are contributors to writings that in parts are academic standard works (ever had some reading with the international Encyclopedia of Islam he was writing for...? Well, I had, amongst many others) - that simply is hilarious, and arrogant. You do not get invivted to contributed to such works if the project mamnagers are not sure about your competence. I think you do not have the smallest competence yourself to form a more or less competent opinion on what you talk about in this thread, you just paste and copy what you pick up on some websites, and from some dubious populistic hear-say that you never checked for it's content yourself - but that does not hinder your to form an "opinion", and for that you think you already deserve respect. But nobody deserves respect for an opinion alone if he cannot justify it, just having a random chosen opinion is no merit in itself. Somebody writes Raddatz raises criticism, and you paste and copy right that, unreflected, uncritically. But can you tell me the structure and content of his first book in the trilogy mentioned before? You better can if you want to criticie him, he knows apparently infinitely more about the matter than you do. If you want to talk about Raddatz, you need to know his basic works. But you don't, right? In other words: your precious opinion and your claims how wrong all the others are - is worth nothing. It's just paste-and-copy jobs, never tested, never reflected, never truly understood.

And so I will stop wasting time with your expertise. you see, I never claimed -and said that in this thread again - that I am the great masterexpert in islam. But the simpe fact is that I have spend more time with learnign and reading about it, than most other people here, and that includes you. that means you are not in a position to point fingers at me, as long as you have not come up to at least a comparable level like me, no matter how high or low that level of mine may be.

You must not like to leave it to that poor status of yours, reagdring the issue here. If you want to start educating yourself on Islam, I can provide you with a list of some substantial literature. Until you do not start to learn about it, save your breath to voice your precious opinion. You cannot even justify why you are of that opinion. you can't justify it by the most elemental facts about Islam, that is. And that is not the adequate position to accuse others that they are wrong and do not know. Taste thy own medicine first.

------

Too many people today think they are so important that even on things they know nothing about they not only must be allowed to have an opinion on, but this precious opinion is demanded to rank as equal in content and value to that of experts in any given field, because that is called "freedom of speech" and "democracy". Every Peter and every Paul demands to be considered as being as competent as any other, just because he has an "opinion", and every Pimpf and every Kunz from Hintertupfingen-an-der-Knatter thinks he is so very important with his opinion even if he is completely unable to explain why he is of that opinion, and why he thinks it is such an important opinion, and knows nothing about the thing he allows himself to have an opinion about. In my book, demanding to be taken as equal to some expert although not knowing anything about this expert's field, is pure 100% arrogance and craving for admiration. and first and befor anything else: it is stupid.

It is as reasonable as if I would start a fight with Bill Nichols about some questions of submarine engineering and sonar technology, two things he is expert for, while I know nothing about them that goes beyond simulation games, one populistic book by Thomas Clancy, and a handful of newspaper articles, and which i never have done any study on. And then I want to tell him that he is wrong, but cannot justify why he is wrong, and I expect to be taken as an equal in my oh so precious "opinion"? It would be no opinion I would voice - it wouldn't be anything more than just babbling.

Your opinion on a given issue, is worth nothing as long as you cannot reasonably link it to reality, and bolster it with at least a minimum of established and available research and kowledge. If you need rethoric tricks amnd verbal cheat-games to compensate for the lack of this competence, then you have not understood the thing yourself. Just to say "That is all nice and well what you explain, but I simply believe different", is not good enough. Your claim to have an opinion but that cannot hold it'S ground, is not good enough. to have an opinion on something you never have studied, read about, learned, gathered experience with - is not good enough. To be precise: it is just imagination, never having been made object to the test by reality. Nobody cares if you are of that kind of "opinion", as long as you only make hot wind, and noisy sounds, but are unable to defend it by arguments whose construction you can explain in a reasonable way, linking to reality and established knowledge/experience. an opinion basing on just believing something different and not more - is better placed in the church.

That's why I do not allow myself an opinion on how to invent better engineering technology for better submarines. And that's why I think Tribesman's opinion on oriental studies is worth nothing. Assuming he is no professional cook with an appropriate license, he may as well be of the opinion that he can adequately prepare Japanese globefish although never have been trained in it and never had a first try with it before - but no matter his opinion, the attempt would kill him: Meinung hin oder her.

You must be able to justify your opinion by reason and logic, knowledge and/or experience - else they are better kept for yourself, since they are nothing more than a mixture of lotto and fantasy tales.

The omnipresence of internet multimedia gives everybody a platform to produce himself and to show his talents - or the lack of these. everybody thinks he must be everyhwere, must make himseolf known to all the world, and he is important and precious and the show can'T run without him. It's a sunset of qualities like modesty, and clear thought and precise argument. As a consequence of that low sun, every dwarf's giant ego casts a surprisingly long shadow these days.

Hilarious , yet again you jump off on an assumption .
Whats even funnier is that you think that it is I that accuse "known experts" .
So tell me Skybird since you are so learned , in the case of academic criticism of Raddatz recent works what is the source of those I mentioned ? Is it something I made up or is it experts in Oriental , Islamic and theological studies that have levelled those criticisms ?
And lets face it they are pretty damning criticisms , lets just look at them again .....
everything from misquoting , taking out of context , oversimplification , lack of objectivity ,ignoring facts that don't agree with his preconceptions , rewriting history , all the way down to peddling a conspiracy theory .

oh and of course to finish......

even saying his entire recent academic methodology is very questonable .

Now of course if you was as widely read as you seem to think you are on the subject you would be perfectly aware of all those criticisms and their sources wouldn't you , but as you seem completely clueless it does seem the extent of your reading on the subject is not quite what you claim it to be .

Could you give links?

Tell ya what - I'll give you my credentials on theology....

I have had 14 years of training in Protestant Theology and history - learning most of the subgroups rather in depth. After finding it flawed in my own personal view (and this is not to say anyone else needs to agree - it was a PERSONAL view) - I changed my focus and studied what are classified as Pagan religions. From there, I have delved deeply into Eastern and other religions.

Want to go toe to toe comparing religions? Lets go. The whole fact you - Tribesman - are trying to pick a fight with a member who many here have significant differences with - is nothing more than an attempt to steer the discourse off the subject. Nice try - but it won't work. I may not agree with Skybird alot, but I won't see him used as a way to make people forget so you can escape the facts. So....

Here are the facts.

Muslim man was married to a woman.
Muslim man was also the starter of a "moderate" islamic tv station.
Muslim man's wife filed for divorce.
Muslim man's wife subsequently found in HIS office - at HIS tv station - with her head no longer attached to her body - ie. beheaded...

Any person with a brain - and a knowledge of the BARBARITY of Islam, is going to figure this was a POSSIBLE "honor killing". Make all the apologetics you want, doesn't matter. The facts are the facts. Just as it is a FACT that murderers who commit honor killings INVOKE their islamic theology as why such an act was ok. Thats right - they JUSTIFY their actions through religion - just as the terrorists do. But I guess the terrorists are not really doing it because of Islam either - its just cultural for them too right?

That was a rhetorical question........

I guess the honor killings and terrorism is just all cultural - which is why it has spread to areas outside the middle east - into Europe and Central/South Africa, even South America. Another rhetorical question - I guess its mere coincidence that the spreading "cultural" actions of honor killings and perhaps terrorism just happen to coincide perfectly with the areas where Islam is also spreading at the exact same time?

Just like trying to divert the subject - all I can say is Nice Try - but some people just are not that blind.

There is a great American saying - if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck...... its probably a duck.

In Europe you have to ask what the duck wants to be called, you Americans are so uncivilized.:shucks:

Just because some freak "justifies" his barbarity with religion it doesn't mean that the religion justifies his actions .
And as for terrorism , who was that world renowned Jewish scholar of middle eastern religions who wrote that they only way terrorism can justified by the koran is by manipulation of its teachings and skewing its passages out of all context ?
Oh and as a clue for the last bit he had a little problem with some of those "rational" publications Happy Times likes to link to , apparently they liked his work so much they used it as a cler example of what an expert thought , but he got angry that they had selectively edited what he wrote and completely changed the findings of his studies to fit their agenda

Oh, I think you're behind on the times CH. The current version of that saying is more akin to; "Even if it resembles some varieties of waterfowl, and ambulates in a manner common to certain varieties of waterfowl, indeed, even if it may from time to time produce vocalizations in a fashion similar to said waterfowl, that is no clear indication that it is or is not a member of these species, or even any particular phylum or genus.":D

Politics is all about talking the talk:03:

Yaddayaddayadda. Raising mysterious implications about yourself may impress girls with a weak spot for pirate stories, and romance novels with Arab princes on white horses appearing from the secret desert, but it leads you nowhere with me. Again you make words, and say nothing, and try to evade being held repsonsible for your statements lacking substance - by pointing fingers at others.

I'm to bed now. Since I already formed my impression of you by what you said in content - and not by the impression you try to raise -, I will not come back to this useless thread tomorrow.



Haplo,

nice saying about that duck! ;)

Why not? Some of us were enjoying the discussion.