I posted a comment on a blog I found through the comments on Chai & Apple Pie (if you don’t read Dawn’s blog, you should… funny, enlightening and entertaining) early today and it was removed. The blog is written by a Pakastani woman and the particular post was a response to another commenter who may or may not be an idiot. The blogger wrote a long diatribe defending Islam, decrying racial profiling, and generally trying to make comparisons between extremists from the West (David Koresh, Timothy McVeigh, etc) and Osama bin Laden.
What I wrote wasn’t in any way offensive… I simply tried to correct her about her position that David Koresh and Osama bin Laden were similar. Koresh was a nutjob who thought he was Christ and the worst that he did was horde weapons despite ATF’s repeated warnings of what would happen if he continued to accumulate weapons. Koresh’s issue with the government wasn’t one of religion, but one of perceived curtailing of his freedom to bear arms. Osama bin Laden on the other hand is an extremist Muslim who uses a religious platform to wage a war against western ideals and freedoms. The two are about as related to each other as apples are to oranges. I know that my comment made it onto her blog since I got a hit from her site to this blog shortly after posting it… I went back a few hour later and my comment was removed.
Not that big a deal really, but I often wonder why people bother with comment systems at all if they feel the need to censor what people write in response to their posts. I’ve never removed a comment with the exception of double posts or comment spam because I don’t believe in censorship of any kind. The funny part of my comment being removed is that this person railed against someone with an opposing viewpoint, called them narrowminded (not in so many words), and essentially asked that the person NEVER come back to her site.
I can’t imagine telling someone not to visit my site or read my posts especially if the disagree with what I write. In fact, I’d rather have people disagree with my posts because at least that fosters communication of ideas. I may not agree with you, but that doesn’t mean I can’t learn from you. Even if you call me names or ban me from your site, I still won’t prevent you from voicing your opinion (however misguided it might be) here.
Of course, that doesn’t mean I won’t fuck with you publicly 😉
Okay after a mad search for the blog in question I finally found it and the post you are referring to. Whoa. . .yea I see your point. Those two guys are pretty different. The Oklahoma city bombing is brought up a lot when muslims get together and discuss terrorism. I am present during many of those conversations. And I can see on the one hand that people shouldn’t make assumptions based on race or religion; all the world religions have bad people in their midst. But on the other hand – experience is a great teacher and lately many bad people are doing bad things in the name of Islam – that is just a fact. If security officials ignored all the Muhammads and searched all the Freds and Suzie’s then we’d have a problem. They shouldn’t single out Muhammads and ignore everyone else – that would be a problem too. I think sometimes many muslims just feel defensive and to an extent I don’t blame them. But, I have a muslim last name and my kids have muslim names and my husband has a muslim name so when we travel we are subjected to a lot of “random” searches but we don’t get all pissy about it — we don’t want the plane to get blown up either so we are happy security is doing their job.
In case some don’t know it, I’m mexican and because of my dark complexion and my affinity for beards and short hair, airport security tends to spend an inordinate amount of time looking me over. I don’t mind because it means that they’re doing their job in so much as they’re taking a look at possible threats. It also means that chances are better than good that I’ll arrive at my destination in one piece.
Oh yea and one more thing (now that I’ve already written a book) I generally do not delete comments either, and I allow anonymous comments. I used to get a lot of negative comments on my old blog (my topics were not as light as they tend to be now). But, I believe in myself and what I have to say enough that I don’t care what people’s comments are – they can say what they want. Maybe I’ll learn something useful, or maybe I’ll just learn that there are a lot of idiots in the world which is fine too.