"They Hate us for our _________". Fill in the blank.

[Philosoraptor]

One of bush's most famous bumper sticker slogans was, "they hate us for our freedoms", referring to any and all terrorists. But that's just a cheap, throwaway catch phrase like "freedom is on the march", Peggy Noonan pap.

But its much more complicated than that ridiculous lie, "they", which now includes all the world apparently, hate us for more than our freedom to grow fat and lazy and stupid, and they hate us a whole slew of reasons.

Its easy to see why the Muslim nations hate us, and its easy to see why the rest of the world now hates us.

In my opinion, they hate us for our interference in their affairs, and our imperialistic attitude, and our assumption that we are the greatest, and the smartest, and the richest, and the funnest, and the most arrogant.

More and more, I think "they" hate us for some damned good reasons.

[soothsayer]

1. They hate us for our idiot president.

[tocqueville]

2. greed n/t

[Demeter]

3. BushCo Hates Us for Our Freedoms

and he's managed to take every last one away, just about.

[RedXIII]

4. ..

well i notice in sharia law that Being gay is punishable by death so in that i'm for attacking the Arabs.

[no_hypocrisy]

5. perceived apathy toward their misery. n/t

[RedXIII]

9. Sharia law

Illegal sexual relations: adultery, fornication and homosexuality
Main article: Zina (sex)
In most interpretations of Sharia, the death penalty is applied for homosexual acts. According to the opinions of scholars, acceptable means of performing the execution included burning, throwing from tall buildings, and stoning. <11>

Death by stoning is also the penalty for adultery, while lashing with 100 stripes is usually the legal penalty applied for fornication (when the guilty party(-ies) is(are) not married).


Freedom of speech
Sharia does not allow freedom of speech on such matters as criticism of the prophet Muhammad.

The Qur'an says that Allah curses the one who harms the Prophet in this world and He connected harm of Himself to harm of the Prophet. There is no dispute that anyone who curses Allah is killed and that his curse demands that he be categorized as an unbeliever. The Judgment of the unbeliever is that he is killed. <...> There is a difference between ... harming Allah and His Messenger and harming the believers. Injuring the believers, short of murder, incurs beating and exemplary punishment. The judgement against those who harm Allah and His Prophet is more severe -- the death penalty.<6>
In Egypt, public authorities annulled, without his consent, the marriage of Prof. Nasr Abu Zayd when he got in conflict with an orthodox Islamic cleric from the Al-Azhar University in Cairo. The cleric had condemned Abu Zayd's reading of the Qur'an as being against the orthodox interpretation and labelled him an apostate (seen as a non-believer and consequently not permitted to marry or stay married to a Muslim woman). Abu Zayd fled to the Netherlands, where he is now a professor at the university of Leiden.

see also Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy


Sharia, democracy and human rights
In 1998 the Turkish Constitutional Court banned and dissolved Turkey's Refah Party on the grounds that the "rules of sharia", which Refah sought to introduce, "were incompatible with the democratic regime," pointing up that "Democracy is the antithesis of sharia." On appeal by Refah the European Court of Human Rights determined that "sharia is incompatible with the fundamental principles of democracy"<7><8> Refah's sharia based notion of a "plurality of legal systems, grounded on religion" was ruled to contravene the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. It was determined that it would "do away with the State's role as the guarantor of individual rights and freedoms" and "infringe the principle of non-discrimination between individuals as regards their enjoyment of public freedoms, which is one of the fundamental principles of democracy". It was further ruled that

he Court considers that sharia, which faithfully reflects the dogmas and divine rules laid down by religion, is stable and invariable. Principles such as pluralism in the political sphere or the constant evolution of public freedoms have no place in it. <…> It is difficult to declare one’s respect for democracy and human rights while at the same time supporting a regime based on sharia, which clearly diverges from Convention values, particularly with regard to its criminal law and criminal procedure, its rules on the legal status of women and the way it intervenes in all spheres of private and public life in accordance with religious precepts.<9>
On the other side, legal scholar L. Ali Khan determines "that constitutional orders founded on the principles of Sharia are fully compatible with democracy, provided that religious minorities are protected and the incumbent Islamic leadership remains committed to the right to recall".<10> However, Christian Pippan argues, that this contradicts the political reality in most Islamic states. "While constitutional arrangements to ensure that political authority is exercised within the boundaries of Sharia vary greatly among those nations",<11> most existing models of political Islam have so far grossly failed to accept any meaningful political competition of the kind that Khan himself has identified as essential for even a limited conception of democracy. Khan, writes Pippan, dismisses verdicts as from the European Court of Human Rights or the Turkish Constitutional Court "as an expression of purely national or regional preferences."<12>

Several major, predominantly Muslim countries criticized the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) for its perceived failure to take into account the cultural and religious context of non-Western countries. Iran claimed that the UDHR was a "a secular understanding of the Judeo-Christian tradition", which could not be implemented by Muslims without trespassing the Islamic law. Therefore the Organization of the Islamic Conference adopted the Cairo Declaration of Human Rights in Islam, which diverges from the UDHR substantially, affirming Sharia as the sole source of human rights. This Declaration became severely criticized by the International Commission of Jurists for allegedly gravely threatening the inter-cultural consensus, introducing intolerable discrimination against both non-Muslims and women, the restrictive character in regard to fundamental rights and freedoms and attacking the integrity, and dignity of the human being.

see also Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharia

[no_hypocrisy]

12. Yeah, that too. n/t

[peekaloo]

6. arrogance n/t

[malaise]

7. imperialist agenda n/t

[ForrestGump]

8. Popsicles

They really do.

[Jamastiene]

10. Lesbians.

They hate gay people and women, therefore, they must really hate lesbians. We have some really great ones too. That settles it then. They hate us for our lesbians.

[Hubert Flottz]

11. Ignorance...

To elect a total idiot. Or to even let that idiot, get enough votes, to get close enough, to steal the election.

[HughBeaumont]

24. That's MY main question in all of this -

Not "Why did they steal this election?"; which, don't get me wrong, there's plenty of evidence to suggest that they DID .. .

But what boils me is the question of "Why was this election close enough to steal in the FIRST place?".

I mean, what did this guy DO in four years to warrant a re-election?

Were tons of jobs gained?

Did the middle class become more prosperous?

Did thousands not die in two major cities?

Did we NOT start a tax-draining, futile and purposeless war with a sovereign nation that never attacked an American citizen while the real terrorists got off scott-free?

Did the government NOT give the corporations and the rich of this country the keys to the kingdom while giving the middle class and the poor the shaft?

Did the national debt NOT soar to the same amount that the economy is worth?

What memo did Dumberica MISS in four years?

[Hubert Flottz]

26. Ignorance and a crew of propagandists who knew how to take

advantage of the fools. Preaching that the GOP was the party with all the "MORALS"...and the ignorant bought it hook line and sinker!

[proud2BlibKansan]

13. the weapons we are providing to the Israelis

[A HERETIC I AM]

14. Ice Cream Churns.

And as it gets hotter, they will hate us even more.

[readmoreoften]

15. Total Sexy Fascist Hotness.

[liberal N proud]

16. Leaders

The world hates america because of it's leaders and their arrogance.
If the leaders of this nation would stop forcing our ideals on the rest of the world, they would let us live in peace.

[matcom]

17. GODDAMN I was JUST going to post something similar

really. mulling over my morning coffee.

what we are (not) doing re: Israel/Lebanon is EXACTLY why 9/11 happened and why a good deal of the world wants to see it happen again.

THIS is why we are hated. THIS is what fuels terrorism.

i guess THIS is 'freedom' :eyes:

[ClintonTyree]

18. Imperial hubris............

our lack of empathy toward a world that isn't up to our "standards". Our government's conviction that we know what's right for everyone and that they'd damned well better get in line or...........

[pinkpops]

19. polka-dotted underwear

[datasuspect]

20. "people hate us because we have fat mattresses and wear golden underwear"

jimi hendrix, june 1967

[rock]

21. Porn and puppies

[deutsey]

22. Chuck Norris jokes.

They see it as blasphemous.

[datasuspect]

23. that's why last night (per the BBC)

chuck norris killed all of them with one roundhouse kick.

on friday he was designated special envoy to the mideast to kick the leaders of israel's and hezbollah's asses. mercilessly. plenty of roundhouse kicks to go around.

they are sending in steven segal to clean up the mess. i

[Skidmore]

25. duplicity

[bowens43]

27. Policies

[Control-Z]

28. pResident n/t

[rude boy]

29. For starters they want of out of their country

One of Bin Laden's body gaurds was on a re-run of 60 Minutes yesterday. He said that what they want is the US to get out of Arab countries. I'll buy that. Wahabists and the Taliban , though, aren't fond of much of anything we do in the west such as listen to music, or read or allow grandma to walk to the store by herself. They may hate us for some good reasons but, Cheese and rice!, I could never live in a repressive Arab country. I'd be like, "What's that?" I'm playing the Ramones too loud? Well kiss my f#@&ing ass!" :)

[harlinchi]

30. Production Sharing Agreements (PSA's)! n/t

[Ioo]

31. Dictator

[bananarepublican]

32. They hate us for our HYPOCRISY!

Good Management 101 - BE CONSISTANT.

In an effort to be concise, why don't you tell me how consistant the USA and its "coalition of the willing" is in its collective foreign policy.

The Taliban was quite O.K. as long as prospects for an oil pipeline were positive. In early 2001, the Bush administration provided them with $40M in aid.

Not, perhaps, un-coincidentally, the Taliban were shutting down the poppy (Poppy Bush?!!!) crop. Today, with a fairly substantial "USA! USA!!" presence, production is at near record levels. (To work out what is happening here, do a little digging into the UK inspired Opium Wars with China.)

The world's one remaining "super power" is quite a pure reflection of the West's intelligence community as a whole (NSA, CIA, and so on), namely, SMOKE AND MIRRORS.

[peace13]

33. I've got two, can't decide

-our f*#king stupidity
-our f*#king greed

To think that after 911 the world was ours. In record time we have managed to alienate everyone!

[LibDemAlways]

34. stupidity......The rest of the world

looks at the chimp and wonders "What the hell is wrong with Americans?" And I can't blame them because I wonder the same damn thing. Americans are seriously stupid.

[deaniac21]

35. They hate us for our hot tuna!

[Flying Dream Blues]

36. Arrogant, hypocritical, sanctimonious entitlement and warmongering. nt

[Armstead]

37. Big Breasted Starlets

[Philosoraptor]

38. There are some profound, AND hilarious replies here....n/t

[underpants]

39. Mel Gibson

[XemaSab]

40. decadence and immoral ways.

Including, but not limited to, the whorishness of our women and the fact that our economic system is based on usury, among others.

[helderheid]

41. "they" (this administration) hate us for our freedom.

[Lone_Star_Dem]

42. Apathy

Ignorance was my first choice but it was already taken. Our collective apathy about anything that is outside of our little worlds has much to do with why we've sank to such lows in other nations eyes.

[oc2002]

43. ..support for Israel with no regard to anything.

its insane.

[LibDemAlways]

44. The US government blindly supports Israel.....

not the American people, who, I think are generally more even-handed; but I don't believe that is conveyed to the rest of the world.

[hootinholler]

45. Schizophrenic Government..

Spelling, I'm sure is bad, but we are a mentally ill nation, multiple personalities.

-Hoot

[BeTheChange]

46. Arrogance...

in thinking our answers are better then theirs.