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'If you enter a camp, you never come out': inside China's war on Islam

theguardian.com

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Re: 'If you enter a camp, you never come out': inside China's war on Islam

#51

Post by _bxg1 »

CompanionCuuube wrote: post #50
_bxg1 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's irrelevant. What matters is this assumption that every detail of a person's religious tradition directly and literally translates into an indicator of their ideals and behavior. In reality the number of people who take their texts that literally is small, both in Islam and Christianity. And those are the circles that terrorists come from. And their evil has nothing to do with the name of their religion.

That's a goalpost shift from the original post commenting about how these specific mosques were shrines to a warlord who committed actual atrocities. This wasn't an "assumption", these were actual events orchestrated by a real person.

Many Christians take the bible to be a literal historical account. Which details of that we can or can't prove are irrelevant.

If you want something more concrete, the Catholic church committed atrocities during the crusades (which were conveniently also around the 10th and 11th centuries), and there are still statues and altars of historical saints and popes.

Re: 'If you enter a camp, you never come out': inside China's war on Islam

#52

Post by pvg »

dang wrote: post #47
jordigh wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I specifically said, no whataboutism please.

Please keep the tired trope of "whataboutism" off HN. It has become a cliché, used to cordon off discussion to what the original speaker wants to talk about—as if speaking first conferred some right to decide what is admissible. That's not how conversation works. Comparables are often relevant, and looking for contradictions in what people argue or believe is a tool for shedding light on a situation. Somehow the word…

Did 'whataboutism' key your car or something?[1] It's a reasonably well-defined term but it is seeing a bit of popularity and mildly tedious abuse. At the same time, we've lived with the tedium of much more common forum verbal tics - 'straw man', 'ad hominem', 'argument from authority' and this hasn't (I think quite sensibly) merited multiple lengthy moderator encyclicals.

[1] Obviously, if that's what happened, I'm with you completely. Whataboutism should be fucking killed. No trial, no jury, straight to execution.

Re: 'If you enter a camp, you never come out': inside China's war on Islam

#53

Post by originldirgibl »

owaislone wrote: post #31

(off-topic/meta) This feels like a very unique HN thread. I can't recall seeing people actually attempting to defend something like this before on HN.

Look at the last few threads on this topic, you'll see the same pattern.

Re: 'If you enter a camp, you never come out': inside China's war on Islam

#55

Post by tptacek »

dang wrote: post #47
jordigh wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I specifically said, no whataboutism please.

Please keep the tired trope of "whataboutism" off HN. It has become a cliché, used to cordon off discussion to what the original speaker wants to talk about—as if speaking first conferred some right to decide what is admissible. That's not how conversation works. Comparables are often relevant, and looking for contradictions in what people argue or believe is a tool for shedding light on a situation. Somehow the word…

What's a "garlic word"? I briefly tried looking it up. I can infer what you mean, I'm just curious if that was already an expression, drawn from somewhere else.

Re: 'If you enter a camp, you never come out': inside China's war on Islam

#56

Post by dang »

tptacek wrote: post #55
dang wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please keep the tired trope of "whataboutism" off HN. It has become a cliché, used to cordon off discussion to what the original speaker wants to talk about—as if speaking first conferred some right to decide what is admissible. That's not how conversation works. Comparables are often relevant, and looking for contradictions in what people argue or believe is a tool for shedding light on a situation. Somehow the word…

What's a "garlic word"? I briefly tried looking it up. I can infer what you mean, I'm just curious if that was already an expression, drawn from somewhere else.

I made it up. Originally I wrote "magic pejorative" but that's more abstract.

Re: 'If you enter a camp, you never come out': inside China's war on Islam

#57

Post by tptacek »

pvg wrote: post #52
dang wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please keep the tired trope of "whataboutism" off HN. It has become a cliché, used to cordon off discussion to what the original speaker wants to talk about—as if speaking first conferred some right to decide what is admissible. That's not how conversation works. Comparables are often relevant, and looking for contradictions in what people argue or believe is a tool for shedding light on a situation. Somehow the word…

Did 'whataboutism' key your car or something?[1] It's a reasonably well-defined term but it is seeing a bit of popularity and mildly tedious abuse. At the same time, we've lived with the tedium of much more common forum verbal tics - 'straw man', 'ad hominem', 'argument from authority' and this hasn't (I think quite sensibly) merited multiple lengthy moderator encyclicals. [1] Obviously, if that's what happened, I'm…

You asked Dan and not me but let me take this opportunity to cheerlead intrusive moderation of "ad hominem" and "argument from authority" as well, both of which are also invariably markers of dumb, polluting arguments.

Re: 'If you enter a camp, you never come out': inside China's war on Islam

#58

Post by JamesBarney »

jordigh wrote: post #24
coryrc wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The UN has done nothing about atrocities in Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and North Korea, among so many more, so don't expect any change here.

I specifically said, no whataboutism please.

There are two things to discuss. One is China right in what it's doing.(which most people would agree is wrong)

The second is why isn't the UN doing something, and clearly whether the UN regularly engages in this behavior is relevant. And here are a bunch of cases of human rights abuses that the UN hasn't tried very hard to solve and therefore maybe this isn't what the UN consistently does is relevant.

Re: 'If you enter a camp, you never come out': inside China's war on Islam

#59

Post by pvg »

dang wrote: post #56
tptacek wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's a "garlic word"? I briefly tried looking it up. I can infer what you mean, I'm just curious if that was already an expression, drawn from somewhere else.

I made it up. Originally I wrote "magic pejorative" but that's more abstract.

The obvious suggestion for next time is allium verbum.
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