Those apply to everyone in the jurisdiction at least, though blue laws are often widely acknowledged as being religious laws that have fallen through the cracks (even though, oddly, Christianity doesn't have any prohibitions on drinking that I know of). Still, they don't say "you can't eat bacon if you live close to a Jew and they tell you to stop." That's insane that a law is in place that says people of a certain religion can tell you what to do simply by virtue of being near you.
Is it? The ultimate reason behind it might be religious, but it's not enshrining religion in law.
I would imagine that it's fine for a county to, say, ban non-halal meat (if they had the power to do so). But it wouldn't be fine to legally mandate daily prayers.
stupid question. of course they are.
Islam does not know a separation of church and state and does not consider itself a private matter at all.
With that religion there comes a mandatory political and societal system, with strict rules on Kuffar and Moslems alike. Wherever Moslem settle in great numbers, Sharia will follow and they will try to implement it.
If it just applies to mosques then it would almost certainly raise Constitutional issues. If it applies to all churches, then probably not.
Most states have or allow their local communities to have rules prohibiting liquor sales near various kinds of community locations, which are generally some subset of schools, churches, playgrounds, daycare centers, and similar. These have been around a long time and have been actively enforced, so I'd expect that if they were a problem they would have been challenged long ago.
I read this article as quasi-racist fearmongering, jumping on the Trump bandwagon for circulation figures. Shameful yellow journalism, in other words.
Imagine how this article would read if for "muslim" you substituted "hispanic" or "jew" or "african-american". Alarmist? Racist? Hostile? Got it in one. Now how is structuring the narrative around muslims any different?
(There's a classic saying in newsroom culture: "if it bleeds, it leads" -- which is why for the past week our news has been saturated with the muslims are coming! Be afraid! rhetoric. It doesn't sell newspapers to point out that there are around 2 billion muslims world-wide, of whom maybe 20,000 are active jihadis in AQ and Da'esh; the rest are just ordinary folks who are happy to get along, and overall they've killed vastly fewer people on American or European soil than home-grown terrorists over the past five decades.)
NB: expecting downvotes, because nothing triggers a witch-hunt like a media panic over [insert terrifying incomprehensible foreign threat here].
Imagine this same article but substituting it for startup hipsters. Jacking up the rent driving their illegal startup buses. I would argue most of the people who are for these immigrant communities are also against the kind of gentrification happening in the bay.
Either you're dishonest with "maybe 20 000 active jihadists" or just unaware. But that claim is laughable given the amount of support Jihadists have. You talk about News Room culture, but you miss there are two sides to it and now you're Chamberlain. ;-)
Also I am pretty sure Jews, African-Americans and Hispanics don't got doctrine that tells them to kill apostates.
A better comparison would be Westboro Baptist Church.
Except they are what, odd 20 people?
Islamofascists numbers reach the millions, obviously not all are active jihadists.
But many support and finance.
This isn't media panic. This is experience before the media even got attention to it.
EDIT: Yeah I saw the Wiki page just like you did. I was trying to serve a point. facepalm
> Either you're dishonest with "maybe 20 000 active jihadists" or just unaware.
> Except they are what, odd 20 people?
If you're off by a factor of 2 on the Westboro Baptist Church, which you can verify in just about 2 seconds it's kind of weird to see you complain about how many active jihadists there are, it's not like they have a registry.
> A better comparison would be Westboro Baptist Church
Not better enough considering the number to date of homosexuals ISIS has tossed off rooftops, compared with the WBC's general standing around and sign-holding.
I'm sure I'm in the minority here (where the word "racist" is thrown around rather liberally and without any mind for "let him who is without sin...") In any case, I can understand the tension.
First and perhaps most common is just a fear of changing culture. It happens, and all is fluid, but it's not uncommon. Many people fear change, and I'm not saying it's good to restrict change because of that fear, but I understand the human nature behind it.
That said, I'd be upset if I had to hear a call to prayer 5 times a day. I am pretty anti-religion as it goes, which is my own personal bias, but I don't appreciate being forced to tolerate annoyance for someone else's religion. It's the same as people blasting music in the park 5x a day - the idea of noise pollution and disturbing the peace exists for this very reason. Allowing it to continue for what I assume are politically correct reasons is frustrating.
I also do not understand why I should be expected to tolerate Islam when it stands against many things I'm for - most egregiously is equal rights for women (not to mention other common religious touch-points like homosexuality, premarital sex, and huge swaths of science education). Islam is most oppressive to women. I hear the argument "Well what if a woman wants to be Muslim?" to which I answer that I'm sure there were conservative women against Suffrage or equal pay or any number of progressive issues for women.
Living in peace with our neighbors is fine and expected, and living in a major city as I do, there are people of all creeds and religions - but I'm still going to be annoyed when the National Guard take over the city and lock it down for the Pope (who, as progressive as he is, is still rather homophobic), or when the Nation of Islam is shouting through speakers on the streets, or when some born-again nut is shouting at me through a loud speaker/bull horn about how my whole family is going to burn in Hell.
Tolerance for Islam is the new politically correct darling. It's still oppressive to women, it's still an organized religion, and like absolutely everything and everybody in this world, it will take full advantage of the leeway given to it.
And so I understand the frustration with certain aspects of what this article touches on.
You're not a minority. And the irony is, many moderate muslims agree with you. Unfortunately they are usually called "native informants" by Glenn Greenwald and the loud far reaching islamic imperialist posse thus making you feel like a minority, but you're not.
I also do not understand why I should be expected to tolerate Islam when it stands against many things I'm for
You're expected to tolerate it for the same reason they are expected to tolerate your beliefs. (Or those of Christian dominionists, for that matter.) Separation of Church and State is one of the best ideas to have come out of the US constitution, bar none, and if you don't see how it benefits you, you haven't lived in a nation that doesn't have it.
(Trust me on this: I'm British and I can't go out of my front door without witnessing the long-term effects of a State religion around me -- a toothless, decrepit thing that is rapidly fading away, but a state religion nonetheless, with all the legacy of privilege that implies.)
"Islam is"... what? That's like saying "Christianity is..." Pick a flavour, then a sub-flavour; you'll still be making generalisms largely but at least you won't sound like a bigot.
Even better stop labelling things culturally. Do you have a problem with women's rights? Good, then fight for women's rights. Do you have a problem with the Azhan, with blasting music, with cockeral's crowing, with bloody church bells? Then your concern is public noise, not a culturally specific public noise.
I don't think it's fair to say that the article is fearmongering.
There are real concerns by the local residents, for example, about the noise from the call to prayer (it can be 5am in the morning). I, too, hate it, I can understand why other people hate it.
Because to me it is exactly as irritating as the 'calls to prayer' but since we seem to accept the one I guess we have no option but to accept the other as well.
I'm trying to imagine the poor people living within earshot of both a church and a mosque.
Who says we accept them? Some people accept them, some people accept them in moderation, some people move away, some people look for options: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10614084
It's super annoying but depending on the value of 'tradition' (whatever that means) the composition of the local council (which the article here actually refers to) and the laws in place already you may or may not be able to find a judge willing to put a stop to it. This can be an extremely long drawn out battle. Churches get away with lots of stuff that otherwise would not be tolerated.
Having lived with the call to prayer for several years now, I can absolutely understand resident's frustration with it.
In a secular society, it shouldn't be treated any differently than if I got on a loudspeaker and started shouting 'wake up everyone!' at 5am every morning.
No, but some do try to ring them at 07:15 every morning really loud and really long, it took a judge to put a stop to that. Link in Dutch, no English source, sorry.
I'm all for stopping any such nonsense but then churchbells are out. All of them, they served their purpose in the times before social media and alarm clocks but nowadays there is no reason for them.
And if that is used to stop Mosques from doing their 'call to prayer' I'm all for it, but let's keep things equal.
Of course that may be a bit hard to do in a town with both a large Catholic and a large Muslim population. But either both should not take offense at what the other does or both should agree that there is no gain from any of this.
It doesn't have to be all or nothing.
To be equal, we can allow churches to ding the bell once a week on sunday, and allow mosques to recite call to prayer once a week on friday.
If you live in a country where Christianity is the state religion, you could just disallow the call to prayer on account of the fact it is not Christian. (One advantage of a state religion is that you can do stuff like this. Of course, you have to be careful not to take it too far - condemning unbelievers to death might be a bit much, for example.)
> Fed up with visitors ringing the church bells in this picturesque western England town, she took an ax to the 500-year-old church door this weekend and chopped down the belfry ropes.
> Mather's family has lived in Compton Basset almost as long as St. Swithun's church _ 400 years _ and she said she felt remorse for what she did. But she also felt that, after repeated pleas to church elders over the years, she could no longer take the bells pealing 100 yards from her home.
> ``My health was suffering and it was a choice of prison or more suffering,'' she said Monday. ``I have done my utmost to sort it out but in the end I had no option.''
> Before dawn Sunday, she spent 2 1/2 hours hacking through the church door with an ax; she then cut through the belfry ropes.
> Church Warden Robert Henly told the British Broadcasting Corp. that the belfry ropes were cut too close to the bells to be repaired.
> ``They can't be spliced,'' he said. ``They have to be new.''
> The last straw for 64-year-old Mather was the two hours visitors from Oxford spent ringing the bells on Saturday.
> ``I don't mind the ringing for village services, funerals and weddings, but when it is outsiders just doing it for fun it becomes unbearable,'' she said.
Bell ringers are arseholes too, it's not just Muslims.
Islamic call to prayer translates roughly to "you really ought to pray right now if you want salvation. Seriously, it's time to acknowledge who is the greatest.. you know who, yeh that's right, God is greatest. And you know what? Prayer is more important than sleep, so do as I ask, just as you did yesterday, and just like you ought to do tomorrow. Get praying people".
> Imagine how this article would read if for "muslim" you substituted "hispanic" or "jew" or "african-american". Alarmist? Racist? Hostile? Got it in one. Now how is structuring the narrative around muslims any different?
Religion is not like race. Religion is a choice that could be changed within a second with zero effort whatsoever.
> Religion is a choice that could be changed within a second with zero effort whatsoever.
Race you can't change, religion you can. That we agree on, there is plenty of evidence that this is possible. However, 'race' is often in the eye of the beholder and religion, how ever easy it is to change in principle has a nasty habit of becoming an integral part of the identity of the practitioner and it can be extremely hard to get rid of it, definitely not a 'zero effort whatsoever' thing, more like an extremely invasive review of what makes up the self.
Think of it as a psychological crisis and not many people go that route head-on. If anything it is usually a very slow process stretching out over many years where disillusion plays a major role. So not quite 'changed within a second'.
> I read this article as quasi-racist fearmongering, jumping on the Trump bandwagon for circulation figures. Shameful yellow journalism, in other words.
The Washington Post is extremely left-leaning. In fact, they recently published an editorial all but equating the US with Nazi Germany should we refuse to admit Syrian refugees.
The article reads to me like a typical "changing neighborhood" piece, albeit one where the author perhaps failed to toe the party line sufficiently to your liking. If you really believe the Post is "jumping on the Trump bandwagon," you clearly haven't read them enough.
> It doesn't sell newspapers to point out that there are around 2 billion muslims world-wide, of whom maybe 20,000 are active jihadis in AQ and Da'esh; the rest are just ordinary folks who are happy to get along
Just ordinary folks who are happy to get along--and who broadly support the death penalty for apostasy, the stoning of adulterers, and making Sharia the binding law of the land:
Really? Expecting downvotes on HN for criticizing an article on Muslims that wasn't a complete whitewash? I'm quite confident my comments will end up subzero long before yours.
And by the way, don't you have some critical comments to moderate on your echo chamber of a blog? Must keep those "safe spaces" safe, after all.
"In many ways, Hamtramck is a microcosm of the fears gripping parts of the country since the Islamic State’s attacks on Paris: The influx of Muslims here has profoundly unsettled some residents of the town long known for its love of dancing, beer, paczki pastries and the pope."
Fearmongering, pure and simple. Won't somebody think of the dancing, the beer, the pastries and the pope.
How about waiting to see what that majority Muslim council gets up to before condemning them? If they do something about the kielbasa then maybe it's time to start articles like these.
Typical in that these articles often cover the ethnic, religious, or other tensions that result from demographic shifts within a community. Look at any article on the gentrification of some historically black neighborhood.
As a citizen of a country with many such cities[0], I would advise the people of this city to relax, nothing bad is going to happen. The only real issue most Muslims have with any non-Muslim country is that it is a general perception that they're Muslim first[1](just one reference but I can get more). For e.g. in India, most Muslims hate Israel[2] even though Palestine has nothing to do with India's foreign policy objectives except at the UN (which is its own story).
As for the liquor ban, that kind of thing happens in many places. For e.g. in India an Indian state (Maharashtra), banned beef, even though it is only the cow that is sacred in Hinduism and one can slaughter buffaloes.
I am not Muslim and I don't like religion as a concept, but as long as the act of violence is not perpetrated, I don't see what the residents of Hamtramck, MI have to worry about.
[0] http://islamicpopulation.blogspot.se/2010/07/indian-cities-w...
[1] http://baltimorechronicle.com/muslimsfirst_nov02.shtml
[2] http://blogs.hindustantimes.com/they-call-me-muslim/2010/01/...
> As a citizen of a country with many such cities (India) (...) relax, nothing bad is going to happen
Probably not in the mostly Hindu areas (India is huge), but Pakistan was made in order to have Muslims rule over the part of the former India,
"About half a million Muslims and Hindus were killed in communal riots following the partition of British India. Millions of Muslims living in India and Hindus and Sikhs living in Pakistan emigrated in one of the most colossal transfers of population in the modern era"
and the violence didn't stop after Pakistan was formed:
And you are absolutely right that "the only real issue most Muslims have with any non-Muslim country is that it is a general perception that they're Muslim first." Unfortunately, Islam has its political component still considered as the inseparable part of the religion.
Are there ways to counter the calls for prayer legally? I'd imagine they violate some noise disturbance laws, especially if they're played right next to people's apartments.
Mainly curious on that point because i'd consider going that way against a church down the road if they'd jangle their bells more than once or twice a week.
Probably with enough time and money, and you'd have climb the jurisdictional ladder. Usually challenges to expression laws are to overcome a restriction, rather than create one.
Not sure how the bells work in US churches, but here they actually serve a purpose, they ring the bells for each hour until 8PM. Around 12 (noon) they have this little jingle that tells you it's 12 in case you can't keep track of "rings".
That way you can either count the "rings" for every hour or just count how many it was since you heard the jingle.
I actually do the latter after 12 for "faux" Pomodoro.
I live in hannover (de) and as far as i can tell, the bells on this particular church go whenever they damn well please. (Probably related to events there, weddings or such.)
You may or may not know this. But call to prayer is nothing like church bell.
Church bell is just a "ding". Muslim call to prayer is a recitation or chant, started with "Allahu Akbar".
I'm aware of what it sounds like, and actually find the sound of it quite pleasing in moderation.
That said, the aforementioned church tends to break out in minute-long sessions of jangling, and isn't even particularly interesting since they only have 2 or 3 identical bells.
That's true. Church bells are not interesting or even musical. Islamic prayers are more sophisticated, the scales haunting.
But it's still religious bullshit behind those call to prayers, and that is worth remembering before allowing it to rock your neighbourhood every morning.
Muslims should download an app that streams the morning prayer privately into their homes rather than blasting the streets. If that app doesn't exist, then quick, someone make it and sell it for a dollar.
Personally I'd prefer to hear local musicians, or kids choirs, or just something that isn't religious bullshit. It's 2015, we're about to head to Mars, we don't need this religious bullshit.
This is indeed a quasi-racist (should be bigoted, not racist), fearmongering article. There are huge neighborhoods of Dearborn, MI and Dearborn Heights, MI that are overwhelmingly Muslim. Any gripes brought up by the Muslim residents of Hamtramck have nothing to do with their religion and everything to do with their individual attitudes.
Bringing up Majewski's perspectives without considering where they are relative to others is problematic. People are tense? The group of people to which Majewski is referring are vocal and don't represent Hamtramck as a whole (nor any other cities in SE Michigan with large Arab and Muslim populations).
For many (myself not included, thanks), there is a tremendous conflation of Islam and Arab. Simply look at the comments in the OP. (edit: But, you are right, bigoted would be a more accurate choice of wording.)
This article will certainly serve as reinforcement for people who are already afraid of Islam and WaPo knows this (which is, for me, ultimately why I find this article bigoted). This is extrapolated journalism drawn from a tiny modicum of truth, which I find irresponsible. Unfortunately, this is the status quo in American media.
What is the fear that is being mongered here? The community's demographics are changing, and different people have different feelings about that. Some community buildings are being repurposed. Oh noes will the people still eat pierogis. Some residents defaced some signs with racist stuff. But honestly, I'm more afraid of racist white people than Bengali immigrants =/
Remember, religious people are always the victims.
Oh my, how could anybody get offended by their position on social politics or anything related to the real world in general? Philistines!
> “The Polish people think we were invading them,” said Masud Khan, one of the mosque’s leaders, recalling that time in an interview earlier this month. “We were a big threat to their religion and culture. Now their days are gone.”
He sounds like a conquer gloating over the corpses of the vanquished.
> The mosque’s leaders plan to put a minaret — a spire — on the building and use it to continue broadcasting a call to prayer five times a day.
Being woken up at sunrise by the azhan: one of the many joys diversity and multiculturalism have to offer.
I find it more significant that this wasn't any sort of natural demographic shift because of jobs or anything else, but a direct result of the federal refugee resettlement program. Some distant government agency sat down and essentially worked out a plan that they knew (or should have known) would make Muslims a majority in a previously massively Catholic-majority city. That has massive political and social ramifications, both at the cause and effect level. Why isn't that the story?
71 comments
[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 142 ms ] threadIsn't that an illegal violation of the separation of church and state?
Also the noise violations for the prayer call
Meanwhile Saudi Arabia condemns atheists to death
I would imagine that it's fine for a county to, say, ban non-halal meat (if they had the power to do so). But it wouldn't be fine to legally mandate daily prayers.
Most states have or allow their local communities to have rules prohibiting liquor sales near various kinds of community locations, which are generally some subset of schools, churches, playgrounds, daycare centers, and similar. These have been around a long time and have been actively enforced, so I'd expect that if they were a problem they would have been challenged long ago.
Imagine how this article would read if for "muslim" you substituted "hispanic" or "jew" or "african-american". Alarmist? Racist? Hostile? Got it in one. Now how is structuring the narrative around muslims any different?
(There's a classic saying in newsroom culture: "if it bleeds, it leads" -- which is why for the past week our news has been saturated with the muslims are coming! Be afraid! rhetoric. It doesn't sell newspapers to point out that there are around 2 billion muslims world-wide, of whom maybe 20,000 are active jihadis in AQ and Da'esh; the rest are just ordinary folks who are happy to get along, and overall they've killed vastly fewer people on American or European soil than home-grown terrorists over the past five decades.)
NB: expecting downvotes, because nothing triggers a witch-hunt like a media panic over [insert terrifying incomprehensible foreign threat here].
Also I am pretty sure Jews, African-Americans and Hispanics don't got doctrine that tells them to kill apostates.
A better comparison would be Westboro Baptist Church. Except they are what, odd 20 people? Islamofascists numbers reach the millions, obviously not all are active jihadists. But many support and finance.
This isn't media panic. This is experience before the media even got attention to it.
EDIT: Yeah I saw the Wiki page just like you did. I was trying to serve a point. facepalm
> Except they are what, odd 20 people?
If you're off by a factor of 2 on the Westboro Baptist Church, which you can verify in just about 2 seconds it's kind of weird to see you complain about how many active jihadists there are, it's not like they have a registry.
Does that make you dishonest, or just unaware?
There must be a better way to make your argument.
Not better enough considering the number to date of homosexuals ISIS has tossed off rooftops, compared with the WBC's general standing around and sign-holding.
First and perhaps most common is just a fear of changing culture. It happens, and all is fluid, but it's not uncommon. Many people fear change, and I'm not saying it's good to restrict change because of that fear, but I understand the human nature behind it.
That said, I'd be upset if I had to hear a call to prayer 5 times a day. I am pretty anti-religion as it goes, which is my own personal bias, but I don't appreciate being forced to tolerate annoyance for someone else's religion. It's the same as people blasting music in the park 5x a day - the idea of noise pollution and disturbing the peace exists for this very reason. Allowing it to continue for what I assume are politically correct reasons is frustrating.
I also do not understand why I should be expected to tolerate Islam when it stands against many things I'm for - most egregiously is equal rights for women (not to mention other common religious touch-points like homosexuality, premarital sex, and huge swaths of science education). Islam is most oppressive to women. I hear the argument "Well what if a woman wants to be Muslim?" to which I answer that I'm sure there were conservative women against Suffrage or equal pay or any number of progressive issues for women.
Living in peace with our neighbors is fine and expected, and living in a major city as I do, there are people of all creeds and religions - but I'm still going to be annoyed when the National Guard take over the city and lock it down for the Pope (who, as progressive as he is, is still rather homophobic), or when the Nation of Islam is shouting through speakers on the streets, or when some born-again nut is shouting at me through a loud speaker/bull horn about how my whole family is going to burn in Hell.
Tolerance for Islam is the new politically correct darling. It's still oppressive to women, it's still an organized religion, and like absolutely everything and everybody in this world, it will take full advantage of the leeway given to it.
And so I understand the frustration with certain aspects of what this article touches on.
You're expected to tolerate it for the same reason they are expected to tolerate your beliefs. (Or those of Christian dominionists, for that matter.) Separation of Church and State is one of the best ideas to have come out of the US constitution, bar none, and if you don't see how it benefits you, you haven't lived in a nation that doesn't have it.
(Trust me on this: I'm British and I can't go out of my front door without witnessing the long-term effects of a State religion around me -- a toothless, decrepit thing that is rapidly fading away, but a state religion nonetheless, with all the legacy of privilege that implies.)
Even better stop labelling things culturally. Do you have a problem with women's rights? Good, then fight for women's rights. Do you have a problem with the Azhan, with blasting music, with cockeral's crowing, with bloody church bells? Then your concern is public noise, not a culturally specific public noise.
I'm trying to imagine the poor people living within earshot of both a church and a mosque.
Having lived with the call to prayer for several years now, I can absolutely understand resident's frustration with it.
In a secular society, it shouldn't be treated any differently than if I got on a loudspeaker and started shouting 'wake up everyone!' at 5am every morning.
http://www.volkskrant.nl/binnenland/tilburgse-pastoor-mag-kl...
I'm all for stopping any such nonsense but then churchbells are out. All of them, they served their purpose in the times before social media and alarm clocks but nowadays there is no reason for them.
And if that is used to stop Mosques from doing their 'call to prayer' I'm all for it, but let's keep things equal.
Of course that may be a bit hard to do in a town with both a large Catholic and a large Muslim population. But either both should not take offense at what the other does or both should agree that there is no gain from any of this.
http://www.apnewsarchive.com/1996/Fed-Up-With-Sound-of-Churc...
> Fed up with visitors ringing the church bells in this picturesque western England town, she took an ax to the 500-year-old church door this weekend and chopped down the belfry ropes.
> Mather's family has lived in Compton Basset almost as long as St. Swithun's church _ 400 years _ and she said she felt remorse for what she did. But she also felt that, after repeated pleas to church elders over the years, she could no longer take the bells pealing 100 yards from her home.
> ``My health was suffering and it was a choice of prison or more suffering,'' she said Monday. ``I have done my utmost to sort it out but in the end I had no option.''
> Before dawn Sunday, she spent 2 1/2 hours hacking through the church door with an ax; she then cut through the belfry ropes.
> Church Warden Robert Henly told the British Broadcasting Corp. that the belfry ropes were cut too close to the bells to be repaired.
> ``They can't be spliced,'' he said. ``They have to be new.''
> The last straw for 64-year-old Mather was the two hours visitors from Oxford spent ringing the bells on Saturday.
> ``I don't mind the ringing for village services, funerals and weddings, but when it is outsiders just doing it for fun it becomes unbearable,'' she said.
Bell ringers are arseholes too, it's not just Muslims.
Islamic call to prayer translates roughly to "you really ought to pray right now if you want salvation. Seriously, it's time to acknowledge who is the greatest.. you know who, yeh that's right, God is greatest. And you know what? Prayer is more important than sleep, so do as I ask, just as you did yesterday, and just like you ought to do tomorrow. Get praying people".
Vs
A bell.
Religion is not like race. Religion is a choice that could be changed within a second with zero effort whatsoever.
Race you can't change, religion you can. That we agree on, there is plenty of evidence that this is possible. However, 'race' is often in the eye of the beholder and religion, how ever easy it is to change in principle has a nasty habit of becoming an integral part of the identity of the practitioner and it can be extremely hard to get rid of it, definitely not a 'zero effort whatsoever' thing, more like an extremely invasive review of what makes up the self.
Think of it as a psychological crisis and not many people go that route head-on. If anything it is usually a very slow process stretching out over many years where disillusion plays a major role. So not quite 'changed within a second'.
The Washington Post is extremely left-leaning. In fact, they recently published an editorial all but equating the US with Nazi Germany should we refuse to admit Syrian refugees.
The article reads to me like a typical "changing neighborhood" piece, albeit one where the author perhaps failed to toe the party line sufficiently to your liking. If you really believe the Post is "jumping on the Trump bandwagon," you clearly haven't read them enough.
> It doesn't sell newspapers to point out that there are around 2 billion muslims world-wide, of whom maybe 20,000 are active jihadis in AQ and Da'esh; the rest are just ordinary folks who are happy to get along
Just ordinary folks who are happy to get along--and who broadly support the death penalty for apostasy, the stoning of adulterers, and making Sharia the binding law of the land:
http://www.pewforum.org/2013/04/30/the-worlds-muslims-religi...
> NB: expecting downvotes
Really? Expecting downvotes on HN for criticizing an article on Muslims that wasn't a complete whitewash? I'm quite confident my comments will end up subzero long before yours.
And by the way, don't you have some critical comments to moderate on your echo chamber of a blog? Must keep those "safe spaces" safe, after all.
"In many ways, Hamtramck is a microcosm of the fears gripping parts of the country since the Islamic State’s attacks on Paris: The influx of Muslims here has profoundly unsettled some residents of the town long known for its love of dancing, beer, paczki pastries and the pope."
Fearmongering, pure and simple. Won't somebody think of the dancing, the beer, the pastries and the pope.
How about waiting to see what that majority Muslim council gets up to before condemning them? If they do something about the kielbasa then maybe it's time to start articles like these.
Am I racist for not wanting to get a horn or some loud noise 5x a day? So be it
Probably not in the mostly Hindu areas (India is huge), but Pakistan was made in order to have Muslims rule over the part of the former India,
"About half a million Muslims and Hindus were killed in communal riots following the partition of British India. Millions of Muslims living in India and Hindus and Sikhs living in Pakistan emigrated in one of the most colossal transfers of population in the modern era"
and the violence didn't stop after Pakistan was formed:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/India%E2%80%93Pakistan_relatio...
"violent partition (...) three major wars, one undeclared war and (...) numerous armed skirmishes and military standoffs"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1971_Bangladesh_genocide
And the atom bombs prepared on both sides.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_states_with_nuclear_we...
And you are absolutely right that "the only real issue most Muslims have with any non-Muslim country is that it is a general perception that they're Muslim first." Unfortunately, Islam has its political component still considered as the inseparable part of the religion.
Mainly curious on that point because i'd consider going that way against a church down the road if they'd jangle their bells more than once or twice a week.
That way you can either count the "rings" for every hour or just count how many it was since you heard the jingle.
I actually do the latter after 12 for "faux" Pomodoro.
That said, the aforementioned church tends to break out in minute-long sessions of jangling, and isn't even particularly interesting since they only have 2 or 3 identical bells.
But it's still religious bullshit behind those call to prayers, and that is worth remembering before allowing it to rock your neighbourhood every morning.
Muslims should download an app that streams the morning prayer privately into their homes rather than blasting the streets. If that app doesn't exist, then quick, someone make it and sell it for a dollar.
Personally I'd prefer to hear local musicians, or kids choirs, or just something that isn't religious bullshit. It's 2015, we're about to head to Mars, we don't need this religious bullshit.
You overestimate the depth and breadth of the spread of always-connected devices.
> Church bells are not interesting or even musical.
Not true! A few kilometers in town we have this church:
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=aegidienkirche+...
It has a very nice set of bells that play various songs throughout the year: http://marktkirche-hannover.de/wp-content/uploads/MK_Aegi_Gl...
It is not very loud though, so i cannot hear it from my apartment.
For many (myself not included, thanks), there is a tremendous conflation of Islam and Arab. Simply look at the comments in the OP. (edit: But, you are right, bigoted would be a more accurate choice of wording.)
This article will certainly serve as reinforcement for people who are already afraid of Islam and WaPo knows this (which is, for me, ultimately why I find this article bigoted). This is extrapolated journalism drawn from a tiny modicum of truth, which I find irresponsible. Unfortunately, this is the status quo in American media.
We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10614103 and marked it off-topic.
He sounds like a conquer gloating over the corpses of the vanquished.
> The mosque’s leaders plan to put a minaret — a spire — on the building and use it to continue broadcasting a call to prayer five times a day.
Being woken up at sunrise by the azhan: one of the many joys diversity and multiculturalism have to offer.