One of the things I've highlighted on this site a number of times is so-called global warming "skeptics" often don't behave like skeptics would or should. I won't bother dredging up past posts right now because I don't want to focus on global warming today. Today, I want to focus on the anti-Muslim bigotry which is growing in the United States. Today's topic involves a discussion which developed from one I've highlighted in a previous post, where I had said:

I personally believe Americans who can’t strongly and vigorously criticize Donald Trump for being a delusional and racist blowhard should be deported to another planet for the sake of the human race. But hey, instead, we give him billions of dollars and consider electing him president. And he’s not even threatening to murder us if we criticize him!

I want to continue on with that point. I don't think it can be stressed how obscenely Donald Trump and many people supporting him are behaving. I'm not just talking about the xenophobia and bigotry. In fact, I'm not going to discuss that at all today. Today, I'm just going to discuss the pure irrationality of this crowd.

Specifically, I'd like to highlight how this irrationality has apparently turned one "skeptic blogger," Jeff Id, into a parnaoid buffoon.



I'm talking about this comment Jeff Id wrote over at The Blackboard. I'm not going to go into all of it. I'm not, for instance, going to dwell on how he creates a strawman to savage by arguing against things nobody ever said. That would take too much time, and I don't want to rehash the discussions being had there. You can check them out if you want. For our purposes though, all that matters is this portion of his comment:

These are distinctly anti-western values. These values are things I want no part of in my country. Despite the demands of the intolerant left, I see no reason why I should accept these ignorant views as equal to my own. Like religion, or ridiculous political opinion, or Sharia law, all views are not created equal. There are many here who have already called this intolerance, I call it common sense.

There are plenty of muslims who act moderate and therefore see islam as good, but there are plenty of liberals who think what Obama has done to America is good too. I watched a video of a few guys with Jesus loves shirts be attacked physically and verbally by a crowd of hundreds of muslims in Dearborn Michigan. I was born in that area and much of my family grew up there. The influx of Muslims to that region has now almost fully displaced Christians and despite there being plenty of opportunities for the ‘peaceful’ muslims to speak out against intolerance, there was nothing but middle east style culture in evidence. Like the European no-go zones, the police refused to intervene.

No common sense moderate Muslims in sight. None of the outrage at how these Christians were being treated that you would expect from modern moderate muslims. I’m sure there was some outrage actually, but the religion as practiced doesn’t allow dissent and those who would speak out in that crowd would likely be punished.

Now if you're a rational-minded individual who pays some attention to the news, you might already realize how utterly insane this is. While Jeff Id claims to be posting "common sense," the reality is what he says is largely delusional. I'm not worried about the little things, like how he says:

I watched a video of a few guys with Jesus loves shirts be attacked physically and verbally by a crowd of hundreds of muslims in Dearborn Michigan.

When in reality there weren't even a hundred people in the crowd he mentions. That sort of exaggeration is poor form, but it's minor in comparison to other things. For instance, Jeff Id says there were "a few guys with Jesus loves shirts" who got attacked. Look at this picture, and tell me, is there anything missing from his description?

I'm thinking the fact the "few guys with Jesus loves shirts" were carrying a severed head of a pig might suggest there is more to this story.

For instance, Jeff Id might have mentioned this took place at the Arab International Festival, a festival where many Muslims attending. And that the "few guys with Jesus loves shirts" were part of agroup called Bible Believers who attended the festival specifically to protest and goad the people there. Or that they carried signs saying things like, "Islam is religion of blood & murder." Or that, you know... they mounted a pig's head on a pole to parade through the festival because they knew pigs were considered unclean by many Muslims.

He somehow left all that out. Instead, he just said "a few guys with Jesus loves shirts" were attacked by a crowd of hundreds of Muslims. According to this depiction, the Christians were innocent bystanders who should be sympathized with. I cannot begin to express how disgusting that is.

You see, Bible Believers is a Christian hate group which publishes all sorts of bigoted literature. I kind of want to show you the antisemitic filth this group publishes, but I can't bring myself to link to any of it. This group of people Jeff Id defends are literal deniers, as in people who publish material denying the Holocaust happened.

Jeff Id is painting antisemitc Holocaust deniers who traveled to an Arab International Festival for the sole purpose of antagonizing people with hateful signs and severed animal heads mounted on poles as innocent victims who did nothing wrong. And somehow, that's not the worst of it! He also says:

The influx of Muslims to that region has now almost fully displaced Christians and despite there being plenty of opportunities for the ‘peaceful’ muslims to speak out against intolerance, there was nothing but middle east style culture in evidence. Like the European no-go zones, the police refused to intervene.

If I were trying to be unfair, I would leave aside that the police did intervene. Multiple times. I won't though as I believe facts and truth have some relevance to the things we say.

You see, the police did intervene. On multiple occasions, the police demanded the Bible Believers stop using a megaphone as it was considered too loud (especially with the racist slurs they were shouting, which Jeff Id failed to mention). And later, the police intervened further by kicking the Bible Believers out of the festival. Jeff Id somehow manages to ignore that, instead pretending "the police refused to intervene." In reality the police did intervene, in a bad way. They likely responded that way because they didn't like the Bible Believers, but as the courts have since ruled, they were in the wrong.

So to be fair to the racist Christians Jeff Id portrays as innocent victims, the police did treat them unfairly. As hateful and disgusting as their behavior was, it was a lawful form of expression protected by the First Amendment. The police were wrong in kicking them out to stop the escalation of violence rather than addressing the people who actually committed the violence. That just doesn't justify this remark:

Like the European no-go zones, the police refused to intervene.

Becauses this is completely and utterly insane. There are no such things as "no-go zones." The idea Muslims are taking over neighborhoods and establishing areas where Sharia law is in effect is beyond delusional. There isn't the slightest basis for it.

There are, of course, some areas in some countries where police are hesitant to venture. Some of them have a predominantly Muslim population. That doesn't mean anything though. I live near St. Louis. I can tell you about plenty of areas police have, at one point or another, been hesitant to venture (Ferguson, anybody?). They weren't because those were "no-go zones" created by Muslims invading they country. They were because police are often disliked in the projects. Or as a quote from the Snopes article on this subject says:

[Some] confound the idea in France of a special economic zone with the problem of the cités, that is, regions in the urban periphery of French cities, that are populated by an underclass consisting largely of immigrants from Muslim countries. Comparable to the "projects" in the United States or "housing estates" in Great Britain, the relationship between the inhabitants of the cités and the police is often adversarial. For example, in a form of protest that has become a sort of annual tradition, 940 cars were set on fire this past New Year's Eve, primarily in the vicinity of the cités. Most French people would consider that police authority is, at best, tenuous in the cités and the police exercise extreme caution performing their duties there. As police would in the US in housing projects, or, these days, in Ferguson, Missouri.

There's actually an entire Snopes article on the idea of "no-go zones." The short version is, they don't exist. The longer version is, you have to be a complete and total moron to believe anything so completely ludicrous. An even longer version can be found in the Snopes article, but there's really nothing more that needs to be said.

There is a thing we call reality. Then, there is this other thing, where antisemitic Holocaust deniers carrying severed pig heads on stakes and signs with anti-Islamic messages like "Islam is religion of blood & murder" and "Turn or Burn" are innocent bystanders being attacked in no-go zones where Muslim invaders have enshrined Sharia law as the new governing doctrine.

I don't know what to call that thing. I don't have the words to describe how... I literally don't have the words. I'm honestly surprised I managed to write this much because I keep finding myself reduced to a stammering mass by how... just, ridiculous this all is.

As a closing thought, I want to emphasize that none of this should be taken as indicating all skeptics hold such insane views. It's just one prominent skeptic blogger. I'm sure he will be widely mocked and ridiculed because nobody would ever support or defend such insane claims. Surely no skeptic will speak in his defense.