The winner of POTF 35 was Abdülmecid I, earning 1 competition point, 5 rep points and a step closer to silver. Despite being a regular here, this is his first win in a while, so very well done.

Winning Post
Islamophobia in the West
Islam has never been expulsed from the European continent, though, but, on the contrary, it can boast an uninterrupted presence there since the 7th century AD. That's significantly more than the most recently Christianised regions of the same continent in the extreme north and east, like the Baltics and Scandinavia. I suppose you are referring to the Reconquista achieved by the Iberian kingdoms, but Muslims continued to have presence in several parts of Europe, like Bosnia, Thrace and Crimea. By that logic, someone could argue that the Jews were also removed from Europe, because the degrees of the Catholic monarchs of Portugal and Spain targeted not only Muslims, but Jews as well. However, both these persecuted religious groups successfully found refuge in more tolerant lands, where Jewish and Muslim communities already existed and prospered.

As a result, Muslims existed in Europe well into the 16th, 17th, 18th and 19th centuries and, at a certain degree, participated in a few of its major historical events. When it comes to Muslims in European wars, for example, we usually think of French colonial regiments, which defended France's territorial integrity in 1871 and to which Bismarck explicitly ordered the Prussian soldiers to give no quarter. However, Muslim soldiers, indigenuous to Europe, fought in both World Wars for the interests of all four different sides, the Central Powers and the Entente, the Axis and the Allies.

Not that, in my opinion, a hypothetical complete ethnic cleansing would legitimise any current harsh treatment of a religious group, solely based on their creed. Western Europe is supposedly proud of its humanitarian principles, according to which, secularism and religious tolerance are endorsed, while sectarianism and collective guilt are rejected. Unfortunately, our debate here is not theoretical, because the hateful fruits of Islamophobia have already matured in post-Soviet Europe. Terrorist attacks have claimed the lives of tens of innocent victims in Norway, Germany and elsewhere, in the name of religious purity, while the most recent massacre, almost unanimously recognized as a genocide, on European soil targeted one of the oldest Muslim communities in Europe, which had been left largely intact, despite the violence, discrimination and population exchanges that had so dramatically altered the demographic composition of the Balkans during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Therefore, I can rationalise Islamophobia and, generally speaking, the oppression of Muslims under the guise of European identity, only from a Christian fundamentalist or nationalist western European perspective, according to which, only certain parts of the continent and only certain aspects of the cultures that have influenced Europe, are entitled to define the so-called European civilization. That methodological approach usually focus on the "Latin" and "Germanic" parts of Europe, but, as previously illustrated, that strategy is dangerously inconsistent and can lead to a couple of embarassing self-contradictions, which further weaken the already fragile logical foundations of the Islamophobic narrative.


Runner-up this week is sumskilz. So close, but silver is still just out of reach.

Runner Up Post
Jewish professor pretended to be black - and now apologizes.
"My heart goes out to any Black person who invited Jessica Krug into their sacred space under the assumption that she was Black too." lol

The only real crime here is that this woman is being bullied into cancelling herself by a mob of anti-trans bigots. If she identifies as black, she should double down.

Quote Originally Posted by antaeus View Post
I'm not entirely sure what you're getting at here tho. Are you pulling some sort of dog whistle about black privilege? I hope you are.
There was a half black guy in one of my graduate level anthropology courses who successfully argued that he shouldn't be required to write the term paper that was the basis for the grade in the course because "African peoples were not historically literate". Instead he (and he alone) was able to turn in an art project, which consisted of images from the internet printed on a color printer and glued to poster board, digital printing and glue sticks evidently being technologies more traditionally associated with "blackness". Same guy used to douse himself with watermelon scented spray before going into any faculty member's office to make one of his unreasonable demands, with the idea that the faculty member would be so unnerved by his/her own racist thoughts that he/she would agree to almost anything just to end the uncomfortable situation. Which is obviously not fair to the other students, yet I still managed to find it hilarious.

As far as the other dog whistle, it's not coming from alhoon. You see, it's very important to some people that Ashkenazi Jews be considered white, for essentially the same reason that this guy must be a white Hispanic:



White people are bad... On the other hand, if you're someone who thinks being white is exceptionally good and that being non-white is bad, then it is important that Ashkenazi Jews be considered non-white.

In reality, if white = ancient European ancestry, then Ashkenazi Jews are about as white as Obama is (that is half).


Thanks for playing everyone!