Muslims protest in Sydney

[skitzor]

thought this news deserved a thread. there's obviously a lot of news articles around, but this seems like a good start.

http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/horrified-ofa ... 25zyq.html

I am absolutely disgusted by the actions of these idiots. what really angers me is the inclusion of children and the inflammatory signs.

this was in reply to a single video a small bunch of people made, obviously to enrage Muslims. time and time again we hear Muslims say that the actions of Muslim terrorists are done by the minority and not to take notice, as the majority of them are peaceful. do they understand the irony going on here?

as I understand it there has been a recent documentary series on TV demonstrating the difficulty of being a Muslim in Australia. chances are the actions of these people have set back Muslim's public image by years. but when anti-Muslim things happen they won't remember these protests, and they'll point to how unjustifiably racist Australians are.

these people strike me as the kids in high school that dish out **** to everyone and then go **** mental when they get any **** back. everything about this angers me. honestly, the people holding up the signs and causing the most trouble should be evaluated for deportation. I know it's a bit extreme, but they can't seem function in our society properly.

[Fireslide]

I'd say it is a minority of them.

According to census data from ABS. There's about 220,000 people identify with Islam as their religion in NSW in 2011. The protests contained at most maybe 2000 people. So at best 1% of the population which is a decided minority. Of course, if any news outlet present the facts in such a way, it'd go against the anti muslim narrative people are building for themselves.

The actions of those at the protests is bad yes, but it is in no way representative of the majority.

[André Axe'm]

I don't see the point on protesting about some stupid video on the internet.
Nobody in charge had anything to do with it. Only people who have strong opinions about Muslims would have seen the video.
So to a majority of people, its just a bunch of Muslims having a random riot.
Where is that anti trolling campaign? I can think of a group that needs some advice.

[skitzor]

The actions of those at the protests is bad yes, but it is in no way representative of the majority.

if that was addressed at my comments, I'm not disagreeing. it's just hypocritical of them to go from saying "the Muslims who perform terrorist acts are in the minority, we are not them, we are a religion of peace, don't blame their actions on us" to protesting and causing damage to other countries because of a video a few people made.

I guess my point is that they had the chance to live up to what they preach and they failed.

[Richig83]

to me this just looks like a small group of people taking advantage of a reason to go and cause some trouble.

There are always that small group that make the rest look bad, there was one guy holding a sign saying "behead all that insult the prophet"

where are we, Afghanistan??

to me these guys made themselves look just stupid, one reporter was asking the mob questions, he asked one guy why are you protesting, to which he replied, "a movie made fun of our prophet"

so, someone on the internet makes fun of something, you go get a mob and riot? how childless can you be!

also what is with certain people on that mob chanting about Australians been white dogs, infidels and Americas lapdogs and the like....be interesting to see how many of those people are Australians!

this kind of stuff infuriates me, that's fine, go protest, picket line, whatever, we are a free country, but dont drag all this religious **** around here, giving the rest of the muslim world a bad name.

[Mekon]

to me this just looks like a small group of people taking advantage of a reason to go and cause some trouble.

Pretty much.

They had a protest gathering (which they should have cleared per normal protocols, their bad) which is fine by me - we do live in a society which allows such. Then some asocial elements within that gathering caused trouble - they are the problem, not Muslims in general, or the remainder of the participants.

Look at any protest/march - there's almost invariably some idiot who causes a scene. Focus on those dickheads, no the protest as a whole, regardless of whether or not you agree with their reasons.

edit: Just look at the numbers:

* The protest began peacefully at Town Hall at lunchtime, where 400 protesters had gathered after receiving text messages and social media updates.

* At the height of the five-hour protest, riot squad officers chased Islamic extremists out of Hyde Park to Stanley Street, near the Australian Museum, where The Sun-Herald heard police shouting ''hit them'' as dozens of people shouted abuse and threw bottles.

* eight men were arrested for offences including affray, assaulting a police officer and a police dog and throwing missiles. Two protesters were taken to hospital suffering dog bites.

Out of the initial 400 participants, "dozens" caused trouble (assuming ~30, that's less than 10%) and eight arrests (2%).

Not sure why anyone feels the need to condemn the other 90%.

also what is with certain people on that mob chanting about Australians been white dogs, infidels and Americas lapdogs and the like....be interesting to see how many of those people are Australians!

If you paid any attention to the opposition sponsored anti-carbon tax protests (as just one example), there was no shortage of people chanting all kinds of offensive ****. And all of those people were "Australians".

[Ashigaru]

Le sigh, fundamentalist Muslims **** it up for everyone, same as any fundamentalist religious group.

You'll always get trouble makers taking advantage of a riot situation and just stirring up ****, look at the Cronulla "race riots" all those years ago. Was a bunch of white inbred yobbos beating up a bunch of lebanese inbred yobbos. Doesn't matter what country you go to there will always be misinformed idiots wanting to start **** -_-

[Kremmen]

looking at the article I noticed that image 9/16 had a familiar flag


The flag of al-Qaeda used in Afghanistan.

You know that they always like to get extremist in every protest, these particular ones are just trying to stir up trouble and make the majority Muslims look bad.

[MCUD]

This is the video that initiated the protests... After watching it, I'm absolutely dumbfounded at the reaction. Google has (IMO rightfully) rejected take down requests from the US government

[FryzieDelta]

Largely copy-pasta from my post in the random thoughts thread.

These protests the world over have to break some kind of record for 'most out of proportion reaction'. The video was obviously created as a joke, or just had really bad acting (not sure which, it's as hard to tell as it was watching Iron Sky). I don't remember hearing anything about mass protests from Christians all over the world when Life of Brian was released. The mass stupidity of people in the world that this video has unveiled is astounding.

Obviously this is just an excuse for people to riot though. People were even storming British and German embassies which, assides from being government buildings which already makes them irrelevant to the video, are unrelated countries. There is no excuse for this. At least the one's in Sydney got the target right, but it was absolutely appauling behaviour. 6 police injured too, 2 taken to hospital. And apparently when someone from the protest tried to talk down the rioters they turned on them. I am disappoint.

[Mekon]

I don't remember hearing anything about mass protests from Christians all over the world when Life of Brian was released.

Apart from the fact that BBC and ITV both refused to screen it, it was banned in numerous councils across England, in all of Ireland for 8 years and in Norway for a year. And that rabbis and nuns picketed screenings of it in New York, you mean?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monty_Pyth ... ccusations

[FryzieDelta]

But did they storm embassies or kill diplomats? The video is already being condemed by governments, but after viewing it it's clear that it's an attempt at damage control that they shouldn't have to take. Picketing a cinema for screaning an 'offensive' movie is proportionate. What is happening the world over in responce to this video is not.

[Kremmen]

Whilst I do not condone the actions of the few, what many people do not understand or able to get their head around is that for Muslim people the religion is more than a belief, but a passion of which these people live day in day out for.
An insult to their God is more of an insult than someone insulting your mother or father.
Again I do not condone the actions, but I do like to see a situation from all angles

[RaTTuS007]

There's plenty of extremist content on Youtube, but watch out if someone makes a **** pisstake video.

[Richig83]

if these guys watch team america we are in big trouble, im pretty sure someone says something about stuff.