islamophobia part 2

[lightbulb247]

follow up to my earlier question...does anyone here actually have islamophobia or know someone who does?

[FredPuli43]

Whatever happened to Roman Catholics? They were not emancipated unti the end of the C18. Yet they were feared with a really good reason. Elizabeth I was condemned by the Pope as a heretic who shoud be overthrown, and, presumably put to death: an example of a Christian fatwa! The Pope blessed the Spanish Armada at the same time.

For long periods in our history Catholics were feared as people whose faith meant they , by nature, were enemies in our midst, whose leaders were set upon taking over the country and inflicting their faith on it. James II was deposed because of his Catholic tendencies. Much bloodshed and persecution was occasioned by these fears. We even had one particular terrorist conspiracy, the Gunpowder Plot, which would have made 9/11 look like a minor event.

Compared to all that, fear of Islam seems quite inconsequential, and pretty irrational in context.

[naomi24]

Fred, //the Gunpowder Plot, which would have made 9/11 look like a minor event. //

That's an insult to the victims of 9/11. What planet are you on?

[mike11111]

If the Gunpowder Plot had succeeded you might have had a point. But it didn't. Your analogy otherwise is not too far removed from reality, though we have not yet got to the point where we hang, draw and quarter muslim clerics (though I am sure that that is on the agenda of some groups).

[FredPuli43]

No insult to the victims of 9/11. Naomi. IF it had succeeded the Gunpowder Plot would have wiped out the head of state and the whole of the Parliament, and principal church leaders ( those bishops and archbishops who sat in the Lords). The consequences for the country would have been vastly more serious that 9/11 was for the US. If a bomb had killed the President, Vice President and the whole of Congress , it would have been as serious as a successful gunpowder plot. Compared to such an event, 9/11 would be minor.

[mike11111]

Fred has a point, with which few historians would disagree.

[birdie1971]

I tend to agree with Fred and Mike on this matter. If the gunpowder plot had been carried out successfully we would now be legally, constitutionally and politically in a very different place indeed. I think what Naomi was referring to was the scale of the attack and sheer numbers of people killed on 11th September 2001 as opposed to the scale and number of people who would have been killed had the gunpowder plot come to fruition.

[mike11111]

Further to Fred's post, those of the Roman faith who bewail the Elizabethan persecutions, have only the Pope to blame.
http://www.papalencyc.../Pius05/p5regnans.htm

[naomi24]

Apart from the numbers involved the difference between the Gunpowder Plot and 9/11 was that one was an act of treason, the other an act of war committed by foreign assailants. Had the Gunpowder Plot succeeded the country would, indeed, have been a very different place. However, had 9/11 wiped out the whole of the US government, a new government would have been installed, but the constitution would have remained the same. There can be no comparison between the two.