The Hazards of Belief

Peregrinus wrote: »

You really don't see the connection? That is precisely what happened to women who wore burqinis on a beach in Corsica a little over a month ago; they were attacked by a mob who took exception to what they were wearing. And the response was not to denounce the mob or to take steps to vindicate the right of women not to be attacked for what they wear; it was to pass laws reinforcing the violence of the mob with the force of the state, by criminalising the wearing of burqinis.

As I say, a flagrant double standard. This clearly isn't about liberating women from oppression; it's about who gets to oppress them.

Im not even aware that there was a mob in France, so its not my double standard, so feck off :pac:

Peregrinus wrote: »

Your defence against an accusation of displaying double standards is that you're ignorant?

sure, also I said that nobody should be attacked in public so I dont see my double standard. if you find where I said Muslims should be attacked in public I'll think on it.

Peregrinus wrote: »

Your defence against an accusation of displaying double standards is that you're ignorant?

No, it appears to be your defence though.

Peregrinus wrote: »

Or yours. Obviously I can’t verify your memories of what you heard on the TV/Radio at the time, Donald, but my googling hasn’t brought up any report that says that the violence was first directed at the group of people taking photographs. And the link you’ve provided doesn’t say that either.

Sniping at one another aside, I think the closest we can come to establishing what happened here is that initial verbal confrontations escalated until somebody - and at this point we can’t say who - threw a punch. Or a stone. And then it was on for one and all.

But definitely not "precisely" what happened in the other case though, which was your claim, right?
And since none of the women were injured, that also disproves your claim.

Even if we accept this version of events, the behaviour which was the immediate spark for violence wasn’t burkini-wearing; it was photograph-taking. So why are we banning burkinis rather than, say, taking photographs of people who have made it clear that they don’t wish to be photographed? The fact that the response has been to ban burkinis strongly suggests those whom impose the ban, and those who support it, see the burkini-wearing as the behaviour which contributes to violence, and must be controlled, and they don’t see the photograph-taking in the same light.

Ah, moving the goalposts, now? I was replying only to your claim that it was precisely the same thing. It was actually very different, and you haven't acknowledged that. I'm not interested in getting into a discussion with someone who is so quick to accuse others of ignorance or double standards and so slow to recognize their own mistakes, so will leave it at that.

So P. , is the charge of "double standards" off the table? I seem to have had the closest thing to forum gas lighting as I can remember in a while?

Peregrinus wrote: »

Well, no offence, Vol, but I came into this thread a couple of pages ago when a post claimed, with no cite, that the woman in the Bhopal video was "apparently" killed a few days later, and this was uncritically accepted - presumably, because it feeds straight into everyone's pejorative preconceptions about Islam. Five minutes googling shows that, far from having been killed two years ago, the woman is alive and well and posting pictures of vases of flowers on Instagram.

Now here are you, posting a claim that the violence in the Sisco case was instigated by Muslims, but again not offering any cites ("I'm not going to search the internet for you"). My own googling has pulled up cites which, I have already admitted, don't confirm the view I had formed about what happened here. But they also don't confirm the view that you formed, and still hold. Given how readily people accepted the claim about the Bhopal woman, I think we need to be cautious about accepting claims which are pejorative towards Muslims. If these claims are being used to support or justify things like burkini bans, which are obviously illiberal, offensive and controlling of women, then I think we do need to insist that they be properly substantiated.

We live at a time, and in a place, at which Der Stürmer-level vilification of Islam and of Muslims is commonplace. That, along of course with Islamist terrorism, creates the context in which we get things like the uncritical embrace of nonsense such as the Bhopal claim, and we get people assuming that if there is intercommunal violence and one of the communities involves is Muslim, they are probably to blame. And we get bizarre illogicalities like responding to a beach brawl by regulating women's swimwear.

The problem here is not the swimwear. Seriously.

That's a major misrepresentation of the sequence of our discussion on here : I posted nothing about Bhopal, and don't care what was said about it.

So, you made a specific claim about Sisco which went completely contrary to my recollection of what I'd read (and as I say I'd paid attention because I've visited Corsica, though not that town).

You said that it was precisely what had happened, and now you can't back that up. I'm saying that your revised version is still wrong, but it's your claim, so it's up to you to back it up with links not to me to prove you wrong. Though I have proved you wrong, so it's really not good enough for to grudgingly accept to budge a few centimentres to an equally unproven version. That's just making stuff up.

(I won't bother with the rest of your very wordy post which seems to be explaining why anti-Muslim sentiment means it's ok to be untruthful about incidents if one is trying to counter such sentiment.)

Peregrinus wrote: »

But I do; I came into this thread in response to what was being said about the Bhopal incident.

So? I'm not discussing that, and haven't at any point, I'm saying just that you are wrong to bring in an unrelated and different incident, much less call them "precisely the same".

I've conceded, Vol, that my orginal understanding of what unfolded as Sisco is not backed up by what I can find online, and I have modified my position accordingly.

But you haven't, you've only modified it as far as I have posted proof that you were wrong. And expected me to bring details of what did happen. But since you made the claim in the first place, it's your responsibility to do that, not mine.

I've proven that your initial version was wrong, and I'm saying that your modified version is still wrong, and that I'm not doing any further work for you. You're still misrepresenting the situation at Sisco all the same.

I'm just pointing out that your understanding of what happened at Sisco is also not backed up by what I can find online. But this doesn't seem to bother you; you aren't willing to modify your beliefs in the light of evidence in the way that I have been.

The evidence is your problem, not mine. I'm perfectly happy to accept evidence, but you haven't given any. Instead you expect me to prove you wrong in detail. I don't have to do that - you made the claim that there was a double standard with no evidence because your version of events was wrong.

That's not me making stuff up. Just sayin'.

So I suggest you back up your claims with actual evidence, not just your opinion.

I can see you're not bothering with it, since you plainly haven't read it. I didn't say it was "ok to be untruthful"; I said it was necessary to be sceptical.

That's just a euphemism for what you're doing.

If you're going to infringe on a woman's right to choose, you need to scrutinise the case for doing so very carefully, and be morally certain that you are justified. But, as you say, you won't be bothering with that.

Again, complete misrepresentation of what I said. I haven't discussed her right to choose, just said that the events at Sisco were a case of Muslim youths becoming incensed at foreign tourists allegedly taking pictures of Muslim women. They initiated the attack on the foreigners and the locals who joined in, it was not the other way around.

You completely misrepresented it, and are now desperately trying to claim that maybe it's sort of true all the same because I haven't proven in detail that it wasn't. You made the claim, you back it up or withdraw it.

So your later attempt at appealing to "scepticism" without any evidence for your own portrayal of events is actually a way of presenting an untruth as "possible because it would be nicer to believe that".