[askdufuga]

People are not evil simply for disliking aspects of other cultures or populations.

For example, Americans enslaved Africans for hundreds of years. That is a claim of fact. I believe it is true. I believe slavery is bad, it should be stopped in all its forms (including as punishment for a crime), and I'm glad that the 13th Amendment was passed.

Hating what white people did to Africans does not make me evil, in fact it's a morally superior position.

To say that this guy is being evil, is like denying that slavery occurred because you're ignoring his claim of fact. You're effectively saying "No, Muslim populations in Myanmar are not attempting to take over the country by means of rapid reproduction. You are lying to gain support for genocide."

Just because you disagree with someone's proposed solution (assuming that's what he's proposing), doesn't mean there isn't a problem. It would have been one thing to be opposed to the Civil War - maybe the costs were too high - but it would be quite another to claim slavery is moral, or that slavery wasn't going on, or to just ignore the whole issue and pretend that anyone who's encouraging war is evil.

What if what he's saying is true? Would you support genocide? Would you be okay with large groups of people intentionally having as many kids as they can just to affect future demographics? Just because there's no good solutions, doesn't mean that there isn't a problem. At some point global warming may be beyond every solution, but that won't undo the facts or absolve humanity for its blame.

[krapp]

>People are not evil simply for disliking aspects of other cultures or populations.

Describing Muslims as being akin to a destructive foreign species that "breeds rapidly" (which is a trait one typically ascribes to vermin, not human beings) is not "simply disliking" another culture.

>Would you be okay with large groups of people intentionally having as many kids as they can just to affect future demographics?

We're not talking about "large groups of people," we're talking about Muslims, exclusively. And yes, I would be okay with it, because I don't see the existence of Muslims or of their children as a "problem" requiring a solution.

[ralmidani]

> Would you be okay with large groups of people intentionally having as many kids as they can just to affect future demographics?

You are defending the rhetoric of a genocide perpetrator. It's like saying "what if Hitler was right about the Jews? I don't agree with his tactics, but that doesn't mean there wasn't a problem."

[Veelox]

To try and be charitable to the poster, I think a better example would be "Would you be okay burning witches if they really did curse people?" than the Nazi example.

I think another way of saying phrasing the same idea. Let us assume that Muslims are intentionally having as many kids as they can to become a demographic majority in the future. How does that affect how we should act?

The above phrasing I count as very different from defending rhetoric of a genocide perpetrator because the answer to the above question is not "Kill all Muslims".

[askdufuga]

I think you'll agree that I am not advocating genocide, I'm just curious about the facts. I like to learn. I want to vet everyones' claims.

What I don't understand is why are you arguing your position? What do you propose I do with respect to the acquisition and spread of knowledge?

[ralmidani]

You are not advocating genocide, but you are saying the genocidaire's "justification" is worth considering.

Even if Muslims have higher fertility rates than Buddhists, the observation is meaningless.

[nkoren]

First: yes I am absolutely saying that Muslims in Myanmar are not engaged in a vast conscious conspiracy to change the demographics of the country. Yes, different cultural groups can have different fertility rates, but to say that this is an attempt "to take over the country by means of rapid reproduction" is when one crosses the line from making factual demographic observations to genocide-inciting hate speech.

I regret that I couldn't capture the full quote in which the monk analogises Muslims to African Carp (there was no way to pause or rewind the video, and that's the most I could remember with accuracy). He goes on at length about how they are violent, selfish, attack other species as well as their own kind, pollute the ecosystem, are a foreign invasive species, etc. These kind of analogies are designed to dehumanise their subjects, and to lead to an inevitable conclusion: for the health of the ecosystem, invasive foreign species must be eradicated. Of course culling always feels a bit distasteful, but in the long run it's the best thing to do.

This kind of rhetoric puts my hackles up because I've seen it before. In 2001-2002 I lived in Ahmedabad, India, and I saw at point-blank range how these kind of Islamophobic sentiments culminated in the massacre of thousands of innocent Muslims. So it's something that I take very seriously.

(By the way: this isn't a matter of tribal allegiance. I'm ethnically Jewish and my spiritual practice owes more to Buddhism than anything else -- but somehow it's still not difficult to recognise that the Rohingya are human beings, not African Carp. Anybody who says otherwise can fuck the hell off.)

[Veelox]

>Hating what white people did to Africans does not make me evil, in fact it's a morally superior position.

Interesting, specifically, the "morally superior position" part. Are you willing to explain how hating what white people did is a morally superior position? Also, morally superior position to what, not hating it?

[askdufuga]

Yeah, thinking that slavery is bad is better than enslaving people.

Omg.. are we really debating this?

[pault]

Hating the crime != hating the criminal. Especially when you are extending guilt to an entire race.

[Veelox]

I would agree that thinking slavery is bad is better than enslaving people but I think that statement is not very useful because it is like saying x > -(Graham's Number) and is not a very useful statement.

What I am wondering where you stand on a more exact statement. Is "Hating what white people did to Africans" morally superior to "thinking what what people did to Africans immoral"? Why or why not?