Friday, August 25, 2006

Time to renew our tolerance engines...

I've been doing a lot of random blog surfing lately, and have been running into a lot of intolerance... mostly aimed at, unfortunately, all Muslims. And I'm not even talking about security at airports, or border cops, or GWB...this is average USians just being ignorant and intolerant.

If everyone who comes here today (and tomorrow, and...) could take a moment to visit ReligiousTolerance.org, I would be truly grateful.

Advantages to visiting this site:
  • It is user-friendly. They even have a page for first-time visitors.
  • It's enormous. They are trying to write balanced essays (as balanced as humanly possible) on an amazingly wide range of topics. I've used their material a lot for various ESL classes -- discussions on Euthanasia, Capital Punishment, etc. But, in their opinion, they are nowhere near done:
Completeness: Although we first established our web site in 1995, and have been writing material ever since, we "only" have 2,801 essays as of early 2005. We estimate that we need at least another two thousand essays to fully cover all topics. You may well find topics on this web site which should be covered, but which are not.
  • You will learn about other religions -- how they are similar to your own, and how they differ, and why.
  • You can read their hate mail. It is utterly sad that a group of people who are attempting to spread tolerance are subject to the worst intolerance from the ones who need them the most:

Some of our visitors are quite disturbed at seeing their particular world view compared and contrasted with a different one. A few write us very angry letters. We even receive the occasional death threat. We don't see a solution to this problem. It is inherent in the type of work that we do. Still, we get about 3 or 4 positive Emails for each negative one.


Please go, and click on all their banners. Browse around, and read up on areas of interest to you.

Thanks.

Lori

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

fundamentals of islamic terror

Lori said...

Thank you, anonymous, for the link to what? Your screed on 'islamic terror'?

Not badly written, but full of subtle assumptions, couched in rather fine prose [is that a real use of "begat" in a modern sentence?!?], that, thank you very much, make my point about intolerance.

to quote bits:
"This begat a natural suspicion of ideas and advances coming out of the west from that point forward....The West was all too aware of this technological and provincial condition of the Middle East as it sought to ascertain and later exploit crude oil resources there."

Yes, the noble point is made that the West misused their power, but it was only against these poor provincial "aboriginal peoples of the Middle East."

Surfing all day, hoping to find someone posting something positive about Islam, to be able to anonymously slam your 'academic' essay in their comment section. My post was up all of 30 seconds before your little 'bot found it.

I mean really, get out there and get a real life.

Lori said...

Could my 'anonymouse' really be someone who blew in randomly out of Argentina? (ISP 200.89.130.44) Or are my little mice using some kind of ghost-surfer, not standing firmly behind one's words?

lifeflaw said...

This site is an eye opener even for one's own religion! Thanks.

I am always fascinated by the Far Eastern culture, I will go read about Taosim now. :)

Lori said...

They try hard there, that's for sure.

One of the owners of the site emailed me yesterday (I'd emailed them about my blog entry, and I finally ordered a cd of the site -- I've used it so often, I feel I should)...anyway, he said:
"BTW we are up to 3,453 essays today. Still feel we have at least 2,000 to go."

mad said...

That's some pretty disgusting hate mail y'all get. And I thought Canadians were a little more enlightened, or at least tolerant, than us Americanos.

Lori said...

Oh, it's the USian fundamentalists leaving that hate mail on the ReligiousTolerance.org site...Canadians are generally more laid back (but the exception proves the rule!)