Anybody heard from Mohd?

Well, Boys and Girls, that answer Mohd gave to my question certainly gives me food for thought. I am going to take Mohd at his word because his word has been good for the past two or three years in every dealing we have had. In our personal dealings he has behaved as an honest and true gentleman. I have no reason to doubt anything he tells me. It is my nature to trust everybody until they demonstrate that the trust has been misplaced. Further, and I believe this is quite appropriate or I'd just keep it to myself. Mohd once told me that I spoke and acted like a true Muslim and I considered this to be the highest compliment he could extend and still do.

Remember, no greater love hath any man than to lay down his life for his friends.

And, let me say that if the tables were turned and Mohd happened to be a guest in my home and some ignorant folks came around to try to kill him simply because he is Muslim and the terrorists were and are also Muslim the old antique .38 would most certainly come into play.

Mohd, I think what you will find in this forum is the views of good and decent Americans. We have a couple of bad apples who wander in from time to time but they don't stay because they know they do not belong here. So, if you continue to hang out here what you are going to find is the way most decent Americans feel not only about terrorism and the war in Afghanistan but just about everything else. Get your info here and you get what real Americans feel and think and believe.

Which gets me around to a quote which I believe is a Muslim proverb in its root form. The friend of my enemy is my enemy. The enemy of my enemy is my friend.

Terrorists are our enemy. Friends of terrorists are our enemy regardless of religion or anything else. Right now it's that simple.

And remember, we would not be fighting in Afghanistan today if the Taliban had handed over the terrorists and closed up their operation which would have been better for everybody, including us.

For whatever it might be worth, years ago when I was living in Nepal and my only contact with the outside world was the radio I routinely listened to the news on Radio Moscow, Voice of America, and the BBC. The same events took quite different slants sometimes but I always thought BBC was probably the most accurate.
 
Blues, Thanks for clarifying. I never hung out in the political arena so the only thread there I had read before was the one Yvsa cited here on the HI forum. I have now read the threads you referred to and I understand your points much better now. I must admit that they have made me wonder too. For the time being, I'd still prefer to give Mohd the benefit of the doubt, but sadly I do see your point that there is significant doubt.:(

Mohd, you asked:

Dear forumites - If I were in one of your house as your guest - are you going to protect me as well?

Absolutely! Yes! If you were a guest in my house, I would protect you exactly as I would a member of my family! I could do no less.

You also said:

Few forumites accused me as a propagandist with certain agenda - see - I am not a politician - I just bring up my view according to my belief & my perception. It's up to everybody either to believe me or not - that I don't have any agenda.

This is what most people have trouble with. Everybody has a point of view and an agenda. Nobody here thinks CNN has no agenda or POV. What we do is discount all reports by an appropriate level depending on things like source, subject matter, degree of outside confirmation, etc.

Speaking only for myself, I don't automatically believe everything I might hear from CNN, but I assign it a certain level of weight. CNN has a reasonable level of credibility and a high level of motivation to maintain that credibility. CNN presents news stories that appear to support the US government alongside news stories that appear to undermine the US government. I find it much more plausible that a story might be true when it comes from a source that does not take a single side, so I assign it a greater initial weight -- pending confirmation.

For an example of a story that should be assigned a low initial credibility score, consider "4000 Israeli Employees in WTC Absent the Day of the Attack" coming from the "Islamic News and Information Network" which ought to raise strong doubts. In the first place, this is exactly the sort of source that is not expected to display neutrality with respect to the Israelis. The reported source seems to be a link to Al-Manar TV, a Lebanese organization that bills itself as supporting the Palestinian Intifadah. A story coming from this source that is negative toward Israel could still be true, but it should not carry as much initial weight as a story coming from Ha'Eretz or CNN that is negative toward Israel. The story mentions Ha'Eretz and a couple of other sources, but gives no links or other useful citations. In the second place, an immediate look at the numbers raises questions of plausibility. If approximately 40,000 people worked in the WTC towers, then 4,000 Israelis would be a remarkably high percentage. Furthermore, expecting 4,000 people to keep a secret of that magnitude strikes me as quite literally unbelievable. There is no way that whatever organization planned the WTC attack could ever have trusted that many people. Whether it was Al-Qaeda or Mossad, allowing even 400 people advance knowledge of the details of such an attack would have been foolish to the point of impossibility. Allowing 4,000 people to know what target was to be attacked on what date would have made a leak much too high a risk. An organization that allowed that level of risk to the success of the mission is not credible.

Doing nothing more than saying
Fellow Forumites
I am in real confusion – especially after reading the following articles in net ...
and then linking to stories like that from the ININ Yahoo group really cannot be considered responsible behavior. When Yvsa pointed out on the HI forum that you had made this post on the political forum, many of us considered it extremely naive. Now that Blues has pointed out that you had done this before and this was not the first or only time, we do have to wonder.

Personally, I am not ready to condemn you. I don't have any reason to consider you a terrorist, but it strains our credulity to think that you "don't have any agenda." If you really don't have any agenda, I'd expect to see behavior that looks more like curiosity than like propagandizing. It's a lot easier to accept that you are merely naive if you show signs of changing your manner of posting when a lot of people jump on you.

As I said in one of my previous posts, skepticism toward reports that appear to support our prejudices is an attitude that US schools (are supposed to) actively teach. I am all too aware that this teaching is only marginally successful even where it is taught and that it is certainly taught much less commonly in many, if not most, other places. I have seen enough examples of people allowing themselves to believe what they are predisposed to believe that I am not at all surprised. I have been guilty of it myself. Still, I strongly advise that you (that everybody) adopt a more skeptical attitude. Attempt to evaluate news stories or reports. If you're thinking of citing them on a forum (or on usenet or on a personal web page or whereever), don't just toss them out with no comment. If you have been unable to come up with more credible sources, you ought to at least ask about them rather than simply present them. I would advise saying something more along the lines of: "I have found this story, but I don't have any independent confirmation. Can anyone help confirm or disconfirm it?" You are much more likely to learn something that way, if that is your objective. Beyond that, I strongly advise against the "shotgun" approach that you seem to have used in a couple of posts. If you are disturbed or confused, bring up a single point at a time and then only after you have made some attempt to learn more about it. Then discuss what you think about it. Why are you curious? What is confusing about it? And then, importantly, don't just drop it and run away. Come back frequently to discuss it. "Hit-and-run posting" as it is known in some circles is a well-known diagnostic for a troll, someone who just wants to stir up controversy.

I see I have done it again. I really have to try to shorten my posts. Sorry folks. I promise to try harder.

Oh, but before I stop, I really have to say once more that being a Muslim does NOT make you any worse or any less welcome in our eyes. I don't think you are the only Muslim on BFC and even if you were, you would be entirely welcome. I am not the only one who has expressed this sentiment, so I know I am not speaking only for myself here.

Paul
 
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

I'm going to wait and see.

I am glad to see that I was wrong in expecting it too be a long wait until we heard from Mohd.

Mohd if you shoot first with words on the internet format you should be willing to be shot at. After all these are just words and if accepted as such they bring no permanent harm.
I know Uncle Billl is correct when he says to come to this forum to ask your questions, especially if you are not willing to try and find out why or what a news source reported what they did in the way it was reported.
Personally I think there's absolutely way too much said about too many subjects by all of the news servers.
 
This is kind of like discovering that you have a big hairy spider under the covers with you. Maybe it has no intention of hurting you, but you still get creeped out. And you know academically that spiders are basically good beneficial critters. But sometimes people get bitten for no reason. Andthe concept of one being in your bed where you are quite vulnerable hits us at a visceral level.

I for one took exception to Mohd's posts. My personal opinion was that he had an agenda. And it was not one of peace. I hope I am wrong here. Most of his posts prior to the 9/11 attack have been a pleasure to read.

However I used to go toa barber who seemed to be a nice older guy. That was until one day he decided he felt comfortable around me and started spewing bigotry and invective and talking about the coming race war against the Puerto Ricans and Blacks.

After he finished my haircut I told him that I simply judge people one at a time. And that I was sorry to hear that he was ready to express such an ignorant and unnecessarily hateful attitude. I never went back.
 
Mohd,

I believe that the great majority of Americans don't have anything against Islam or Muslims. At least nowhere near the level of hate Muslims in some parts of the world have for Americans.

For me and many others on the forums, there is no such thing as an "evil" religion, people or race - only evil individuals.

Andrew Limsk

Originally posted by prn

...
Oh, but before I stop, I really have to say once more that being a Muslim does NOT make you any worse or any less welcome in our eyes. I don't think you are the only Muslim on BFC and even if you were, you would be entirely welcome. I am not the only one who has expressed this sentiment, so I know I am not speaking only for myself here.

Paul
 
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