Forum Post: I Am American, and I Respect Islam - by Abigail Disney, great-nice of Walt Disney
Posted 11 years ago on Sept. 27, 2012, 11:31 p.m. EST by gmxusa
(274)
This content is user submitted and not an official statement
I love my country. I love it a lot. I love the world too. I love them both for the same reasons. They are exciting and interesting and full of all kinds of people and ideas. I know that when I open myself up to new people and experiences there is really no end to things I can learn and discover—no limit to the ways in which I can be made to feel humble in the face of people's greatness, or proud of people's accomplishments
Over the past few weeks, it has become clear that some people in my country have created an insulting vision of Islam, a degrading video on YouTube. I deplore their actions. Their values are foreign to me and I do not understand their hearts.
Those people do not represent their country, they do not represent my America. They inhabit the edges of society. The Americans I know do not insult the faith of others. The Americans I know have built a strong, vibrant, multi-faith society of Muslims, Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, Atheists and many others by embracing an ethic of respect and understanding. The Americans I know look into their own hearts, seeking to become more kind, more good, more decent. They know we must replace loathsome expressions of darkness with our own sincere gestures of loving kindness.
To build a culture of peace, we must repudiate hatred. This sign is a demonstration of our love. We stand for peace and we choose to drown out darkness with light.
Good people will always disagree with each other. But disagreement is much different from hatred. Even those who disagree with you about politics or religion are, on the whole, good and decent people who simply see the world in a different way.
We respect Islam. We love Islam. We love you. We know there is beauty in your faith and traditions. We hope to know it better, through peace and dialogue, bridging our cultures with calm and understanding.
Abigail Disney
On one hand the purpose of a religion is to attract followers. What you see of Islam is window dressing, best behavior, etc. Christians are fleeing Egypt, Iraq, Syria, Nigeria because they have been attacked by Muslim marauders. Christians communities have lived in some of these areas for almost 2000 years.
Respect the 2000 years Christianity has endured. The anti-Christ is real. It is more than a Hollywood caricature. Who but the antichrist would crucify Jesus? Who but the antichrist would lay siege to Jerusalem 634 AD, Cordoba 711 AD, Constantinople 1453 AD, Vienna 1683 AD?
Muslims invaded southern Asia for nearly 1000 years. Why is there rebellion in Egypt, and Syria right now? Today Muslims might want to visit Disneyland, 50 years from now that may want to demolish it along with other symbols of Western culture.
Well said, no one ever talks about that, they always point out Christains as being the ones who have caused the most death and suffering. If she loves peace and unity of religion so much she needs to look at all the hate that has been turned on Christians.
Very nice post. Choose love, not fear.
What kink a loving freak are you! They kill our ambassador, and all you say is choose love, not fear! Examine your head!
What killed our ambassador was an armed terrorist gang, not millions of innocent Muslims. Please, try thinking a little before posting.
beside stevens being murdered, he was tortured and raped.
Beautiful world doesn't care. Don't hurt Muslim feelings!
the hell with their feelings.they execute gays for the" crime "of being gay. hollywod adores the savages and yet , these savages would execute most of the sactors and actresses.
Nice that she thinks she represents the the majority of Americans. Quite an impressive ego. And a grand -nice ( sic) of Walt Disney? VERY impressive!
I respect the non violent people that are burning our flags. I respect the non violent people that killed our Ambassador. I respect them because they are peaceful and not violent!
How come the Muslims don't burn the French or the Brazilian flag? Both countries are democracies and very similar to the USA in every respect, except they are not killing MUSLIMS FOR OIL.
Did she say that the artist behind "p* Christ" inhabited the edges of society? Last I checked, no one even pulled tax funding for it.
If the European Catholics were still burning heretics?
If the Germans were still burning Jews?
If the Americans were still burning slaves & witches ?
"We respect Islam. We love Islam. We love you. We know there is beauty in your faith and traditions. We hope to know it better, through peace and dialogue, bridging our cultures with calm and understanding."
Abagail - you should write an appeal to "normal" Muslims to stop their murdering brothers - this is not a matter of respect - it is a matter of murder
Ehh... Listen, I got this asteroid of a meteorite, really. And it's just kinda hanging out in space not really doing anything, you know? What if I sent it, by way of Allah, to Mecca? What then?
What is the kinetic energy of a one mile mass traveling at 17,000 mph anyway? Does anybody know?
And who but Allah has the power to move the heavens?
Oh what to do, what to do...
I cannot believe you just said something reasonable.
Welcome to reality...
There are people so backward that they're willing to kill people over a YouTube video -- and we're the ones who are supposed to apologize? That's not very "progressive".
It also insults Muslms to maintain a completely different set of standards for the Mulsim world versus the civilized world. It's not okay to stab people to death#Murder_and_Index_on_Censorship) when they offend you. Pretending like we understand is the same thing as saying that we just expect them to remain in the dark ages because they're somehow inferior. Like we just expect them to be incapable of being civilized, like you expect a dog to bite.
We don't understand. It's not acceptable. Stop pretending. People offend other people sometimes and it's not okay to go around murdering people over it.
And it's not okay to call a country your ally, while using drones to kill civilians in the streets. Just like it's not okay to lock people up without good reason.
Have you see this video? The MSM concocted the story you're believing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nPf0waX2HI&feature=player_embedded#
That video doesn't exist, but let's think about this for a moment: Does "mainstream media" fabricate outrage and violence, or does the Muslim world truly overreact sometimes to the slightest offenses?
Edited to put the video back up again.
Thanks, but are you saying that this didn't happen?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jyllands-Posten_Muhammad_cartoons_controversy
What about this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theo_van_Gogh_(film_director)
What about this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Satanic_Verses_controversy#Attacks
Didn't happen?
"This page has been deleted. The deletion and move log for the page are provided below for reference. " That was from your middle link.
Sure there's some radicals in that religion. The worst of them (Mujahadeen) were recruited, trained and equipped with hi-tech weapons, as well as taught how to re-engineer unexploded ordnance, by your govt., to help repel the Soviets from Afghanistan. It worked.
As for provoking the worst elements, have you discounted the possibility that a lot of the provoking is part of a larger psy-op by corporo-crims to smoke-screen the public, and fill up news articles?
Here's a TinyURL version of the middle link about Theo van Gogh: http://tinyurl.com/8r4lwva
That's an interesting conspiracy theory about the mainstream media. After considering it, no. Occam's Razor kind of rips that apart.
But I can't really figure out how that would somehow justify apologies from people who draw cartoons or write books, or even people who make movies that are intentionally offensive. That's the world that we live in, and if it's acceptable within some subculture to overreact to minor offenses and kill people in response, then they're the ones who are wrong.
Smoke-screening happens every election.
I'll tell you what really offends me. That's lying to drag many nations into an illegal war, bombing a country from prosperity back to the stone age, dropping depleted uranium all over that country, and killing over 100,000 civilians, displacing over 3 million others, and pretending you've helped that nation.
A few hundred fundamentalist muslims rioting pales in comparison.
Uhm, sure. I can agree with that. But yet again I fail to see how that justifies expecting a cartoonist or an author or a movie director to apologize. People who respond to non-violence with violence are wrong.
I'm not saying there's no reactionary extremist muslims.
I'm saying that most of what you're hearing is a media beat-up.
Did you watch that video to the end? No coincidence that these instances happened on September 11th?
I did and I don't see how that's relevant to my objection to the kind of appeasement that I was objecting to in the original post.
Appeasement is a personal choice.
Making any kind of freedom of speech unlawful is just a further action from the 1% intended to get us all used to being told what we can and can't do.
If you are personally offended by others being personally offended, then I am in no position to tell you how you should be feeling.
Unlawful? I didn't suggest making appeasement unlawful, but there are plenty of people all over the world who think that blasphemy should be illegal.
(Bonus points for going meta at the end there.)
The prez is the one talking about making religious blasphemy illegal.
The appeasement line was separated from the next line.
(the button on the left is for Bonus points. ;-)
Haha alright I suppose begging for twinkles is allowed.
What I found even more offensive is that these people trouncing on America, killing Americans, are the very same people we were militarily supporting. I don't really care what incited the violence, we should not be lending support to empower those who intend to war on us.
As long as peaceful Muslims do nothing to stem their own radicals then they will share in some of the responsibility.
Oh MY God...