1. Comment #65862 by Mango on August 27, 2007 at 6:48 am

The phrase "lighten up" comes immediately to mind.

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2. Comment #65864 by Corylus on August 27, 2007 at 6:54 am

Oh, it's about football.

I must say that the actual article is a bit of a let down. I was expecting all manner of things after reading that wonderful title ;)

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3. Comment #65866 by PaulJ on August 27, 2007 at 7:03 am

Afghan MP Mirwais Yasini said: "To have a verse of the Koran on something you kick with your foot would be an insult in any Muslim country around the world."

Too shocking!

Honestly, this is beyond a joke. Offence should not be something that can be given, only taken. It's therefore entirely the taker's choice, and the 'giver' should not be held accountable.

"How dare you look at me with those eyes that you've used to look at ... whatever ...!"

I think Mango's comment, "lighten up" is entirely appropriate. These people could save themselves an awful lot of bother if they accepted that such concern over 'offence' really doesn't matter. Don't they have enough to worry about without all this petty stuff?

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4. Comment #65883 by Greg23 on August 27, 2007 at 8:49 am

Then again - It shows, once more, how clueless the U.S. is to other cultures, however screwed up they might be.

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5. Comment #65893 by cincyatheist on August 27, 2007 at 9:27 am

Quit your damn whining and get over yourselves! These people are so delicate, becoming offended by the slightest provocation. There are only two explanations for this:

Either (1) they really are this rigid, or (2) they only pretend to be this rigid in order to have a reason to attack someone. Either way, it is immensely frightening.

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6. Comment #65898 by scooternyc on August 27, 2007 at 9:41 am

I don't care who is offended. It matters not.

You have a right to be offended, wallow in it.

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7. Comment #65901 by Kingasaurus on August 27, 2007 at 9:47 am

This is all the fault of the Saudis anyway. If you are going to put a Koranic verse or the name of your god on your nation's flag, you have to expect that the flag is going to be reproduced and printed elsewhere in a wide variety of contexts: The Olympic Games, atlases, dictionaries, encyclopedias - not to metion a thousand others.

The last time something of this sort happened, the Saudis were offended when McDonald's printed the Saudi flag (amongst fifty others) on their paper bags as a promotion for the Olympics. The Saudis were mad that Allah's name, printed on these bags, would be thrown in the garbage when people were finished eating.

This sort of hyper-sensitivity is utterly ridiculous, especially since THEY created this potential problem in the first place. They CHOSE to put their god's name on a flag, and nobody forced them to do it. The idea that they now expect the whole world to tiptoe around their sensibilities on this matter is completely absurd.

You don't like it? Change your freaking flag. You can't be expected to have worldwide control over how an image of such a thing is reproduced and disseminated.

This is so backward, there's no doubt in my mind that we're in it for the long haul with these people. These sorts of medieval attitudes don't disappear overnight.

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8. Comment #65910 by hungarianelephant on August 27, 2007 at 10:32 am

So:
Burning a flag with a cross on it = Good
Producing a football with God's name on it = Bad

Phew. Glad we got that cleared up.

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9. Comment #65911 by PrimeNumbers on August 27, 2007 at 10:33 am

Blasphemous Balls? That's balls filled with Atheist sperm, right?

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10. Comment #65917 by Lionel A on August 27, 2007 at 11:19 am

I have an idea, perhaps we should stamp a little Saudi flag on chicken eggs (instead of the little Lion we used to see on eggs in the UK and nobody took offence), then we could all walk on the 'broken egg shells'.

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11. Comment #65919 by Steven Mading on August 27, 2007 at 11:24 am

Kingasaurus beat me to it. If you want tight control over where a word is printed, don't go and put it on your nation's flag, which you know will be reproduced and used in a wide variety of ways in a wide variety of logos. In other words, the only people at fault here are the Saudi's. If the Afghan mullas wanted to vent anger, vent it at Saudi Arabia, the country that put the words on their freakin' flag in the first place.

Other Comments by Steven Mading

12. Comment #65920 by scottishgeologist on August 27, 2007 at 11:27 am

Afghan MP Mirwais Yasini said: "To have a verse of the Koran on something you kick with your foot would be an insult in any Muslim country around the world."

Its this foot thing that they have - apparently pointing the sole of your foot at a muzzie is extremely insulting . Must make karate contests interesting.

And then there was that business when Saddam's statue got pulled down, they beat it with their sandals in some sort of act of humiliation.

Not my idea of shoe and foot humiliation... :-)

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13. Comment #65921 by scottishgeologist on August 27, 2007 at 11:35 am

So , let me get this right, if you burned a Saudi flag, they might get a little bit upset.....

Imagine the reaction you'd get if you did that at the "stoning the devil" part of the Hajj!

Corylus, I agree, "blasphemous balls" sounds like a title to a highly fascinating story. The mind boggles at what this could entail.

Instead, its about religion and football. AAAAARGH!!! The Old Firm all over again. Except this time they wont kill each other with buckfast bottles and knives - it'll be AKs and RPGs...

Get out of Afghanistan now, its a lost cause without a shadow of a doubt if they go sdown that road....

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14. Comment #65924 by BicycleRepairMan on August 27, 2007 at 11:37 am

Give me an R!, give me a P!, give me an E!

Sing with me : Religion Poisons Everything.


The more I see of such utter nonsense, the more I like Hitchens American undertitle, if he's going for "build up that wall!" as his slogan, I think I will borrow this as my slogan.

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15. Comment #65927 by robotaholic on August 27, 2007 at 11:49 am

I read it on google news before i got here and thought - wow muslims are offended so easily.

This article makes it clear - religion causes one group to hate anouther just like tribalism - it seems so clear that it's an impediment to humans getting along - Just like Sam Harris says.

Oh and yes, Christopher Hitches is right too- R.P.E.

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16. Comment #65928 by Russell's Teapot on August 27, 2007 at 11:50 am

On the whole, it disgusts me more that it appears the US military did not put any consideration into whether or not there'd be a problem than what ridiculous beliefs these Afghans have in the first place. It's the same ignorance of people and culture that now has us despised world-wide.

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17. Comment #65930 by scooternyc on August 27, 2007 at 11:59 am

The article mentions:"Some displayed flags from countries all over the world"...on the balls not just one particular.

Your post is probably more about you hating the US Military and you're just looking for another reason to invoke your disdain.

I don't care what the motivation was, to incite or not, people need to get a grip emotionally and stop demanding special treatment because the feeling of being offended(as Hitch says)"as though that was an argument".

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18. Comment #65932 by 82abhilash on August 27, 2007 at 12:23 pm

I agree with Kingasaurus. Before they claim disrespect for the Quran, they should establish whether, any disrespect was intended, given the context. But this is not about fairness, but about finding another excuse to insult freedom loving people, by misusing their own good will. I wonder how well they will take it if demonstrators in US burn a Saudi flag in protest.

On a personal note, I feel there are enough genuine reasons today for people to feel disrespectful of the Quaran.

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19. Comment #65934 by steveroot on August 27, 2007 at 12:38 pm

Well, as a resident west of "the pond", I assumed these footballs were... well, FOOTBALLS. At least give the U. S. credit for not passing out what *we* call "footballs"... or "PIGSKINS"!

The mullahs are pissed because their god is too... imaginary... to protect himself from insults, and they use this as a pretext for their ridiculous behavior.
Steve

Other Comments by steveroot

20. Comment #65945 by Yorker on August 27, 2007 at 1:47 pm

Balls are for kicking, especially religious ones!

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21. Comment #65954 by don malvado on August 27, 2007 at 2:45 pm

I wonder if they were the pigskin sort.

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22. Comment #65955 by DC_Runner on August 27, 2007 at 2:58 pm

Can the rioting be far behind? It's only a matter of time.

This sort of hair-trigger sensitivity speaks volumes.

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23. Comment #65958 by xenu on August 27, 2007 at 3:17 pm

Pssshhh..Boo fuckin' Hoo! Cry me a river.

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24. Comment #65966 by The Schuermannator on August 27, 2007 at 3:49 pm

Apparently, Allah is not a sports fan.

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25. Comment #65971 by Russell Blackford on August 27, 2007 at 4:02 pm

Is anyone else annoyed at how misleading the story is? Even if you read the whole thing carefully, it's difficult to tell whether each football had multiple flags on it or whether there was a range of footballs with different flags. At least, I can't work out which is meant. In any event, it's possible to work out that many flags were used, not just the Saudi one. It's also possible to work out that the name of Allah appeared only insofar as it was on the name of of the Saudi flag. There's no issue here of giving out footballs to kick around, with just the name of Allah written on them as a sort of logo.

But look at the opening of the story: "A demonstration has been held in south-east Afghanistan accusing US troops of insulting Islam after they distributed footballs bearing the name of Allah."

The following para starts to clarify, but you have to read on carefully for quite a while to be able to work it out - to the extent that you actually can at all.

I submit that anyone who reads this story carelessly, as most readers do with news stories (the inverted triangle structure, or whatever it's called, taught to journalists assumes this), will have a totally false impression of what happened.

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26. Comment #65997 by Shuggy on August 27, 2007 at 6:32 pm

How many flags are on the footballs, I wonder. So just how big is the Saudi flag? So can you actually read the name of Allah, or just deduce that it is, in some sense, there, because there is a Saudi flag, which we know has the shahada on it, in which is included the name of Allah?

I wonder if they covered the name with an inkblot, would that make it all right? Somehow I suspect it wouldn't. Or if they scraped it off?

Of course, telling them to "lighten up" won't get you anywhere. This kind of righteous offence-taking is seldom about the thing itself, but the act of taking offence, and especially the act of displaying your faith by taking offence where everyone can see you taking it, and take it with you - just another of the shared rituals that keeps religions together.

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27. Comment #66020 by Tumara Baap on August 27, 2007 at 10:35 pm

From India, to Japan, to Brazil, people get offended over things which I personally think are utterly frivolous. There are circumstances when I will gleefully offend, say for example, in labeling barbaric a cultural practice that harms an individual. But in this case, the U.S. takes the brunt for being unnecessarily insensitive and as is too often the case, abysmally stupid.
It is amazing how clueless we are of others cultures. It's not just footballs. The Australian military scholar David Kilcullen has remarked that you cannot conduct counter-insurgency maneuvers unless you know the other side inside out. Americans have learnt next to nothing from the British in Kenyan, Irish and Burmese uprisings or the Indonesian engagement in East Timor, or for that matter the Shin Bet versus the Palestinians. One needs to be able to completely read, understand and anticipate everything on the other side, then employ balanced tactics of winning over civilian sympathies, marginalizing the morale and message of the opponent, and top it off with surgical military operations, among other things. But we couldn't even make a connection between the shoe and an insult in this culture. It explains how a lonely lunatic in cave could possibly have outrun, outwitted and outpaced a "superpower." It shows how much we value the cerebral aspect of warfare when we purge our own team of rare Arabic and Farsee speakers because of their sexual inclinations. And if flushing down the potty "know thy enemy" axiom wasn't enough, instead of marginalizing the opponent as a fringe group we elevate their profile by falsely lumping them with a full fledged state. Still not enough? How about bandying about the word "crusade"? Way to go, USA.
P.S. Kilcullen now works for the U.S. The New Yorker did an article on counter-insurgency which paints a Bushie intelligence/military atmosphere of "if you're a man with a brain, you're a man in trouble" and where Kilcullen has yet to be taken seriously by the top brass.

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28. Comment #66021 by atheist_peace on August 27, 2007 at 11:04 pm

Here's an idea: if the words are so precious, don't put them on your damn flag.

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29. Comment #66024 by pewkatchoo on August 28, 2007 at 12:14 am

Oh FFS Russel's Teapot, grow up. You cannot keep up with the things that these morons get offended by. We continually find new and unusual ways to offend them on a daily basis.

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30. Comment #66025 by pewkatchoo on August 28, 2007 at 12:26 am

Tumara Baap
Rubbish. Do you really think that the military in Iraq and Afghanistan don't have people who understand the culture. I am pretty sure that they would have consulted local people about whether it would be a good idea to release these footballs.

The problem is, with all the best will in the world, it is impossible to do anything at all for these people without causing some sort of offence along the way. As I said, you just can't keep up with it. So why bother trying.

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31. Comment #66026 by Veronique on August 28, 2007 at 12:42 am

27. Comment #66020 by Tumara Baap

Without elaborating, I agree with you regarding the attitude of America to other cultures. I found the New Yorker article you referred to and read it. The two more current papers George Packer cites as part of Kilcullen's lexicon are probably worth reading. I am looking forward to the release of Mark Lilla's book. I hope he may be able to teach us quite a bit as well.

We all have to try to understand what's going on far more fully than we do. I don't know about you, but I think we tend to reduce our understanding of Iraq and its culture to some handy concepts that don't describe, let alone enunciate, the great complexity that the effect of the war 'as she is waged' so to speak, has on Muslims.

It's not just America. Australia is much the same, though less so and for somewhat different reasons. Mike Kelly of the Australian Army, now turned Labor candidate in the coming elections, has been quite blunt about his perceptions of the mismanagement of the stabilisation in Iraq after the initial storming of that country. He laid most of the blame at Rumsfeld's insensitive storm trooper's boots. Rumsfeld sacked thousands of men employed in regular jobs when the Ba'athists were disenfranchised.

Of course, that led to his (Kelly's) testimony being discredited and marginalised by the ruling Liberal Coalition. I suspect his public interviews made more sense to the public than did the rebuttal by the Fed. Minister for Defense.

Here's the link to the New Yorker article mentioned by Baap.

http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/12/18/061218fa_fact2

It's definitely worth a read. Thanks mate.
V

Other Comments by Veronique

32. Comment #66028 by Hugo on August 28, 2007 at 12:47 am

Football and religion, two things I will probably never understand why grown up people take them so serious.

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33. Comment #66034 by BAEOZ on August 28, 2007 at 1:52 am

Hugo, I find that a lot of drunken argument in pubs boil down to "My football teams better than yours because you're a knobhead!" or similar. Football needs alchohol to make an idiot, religion does it all by its self....

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34. Comment #66052 by I'mNotAlone on August 28, 2007 at 5:33 am

Like Tumara and Veronique, I also think that America sometimes shoots itself in the foot with it's lack of understanding of other cultures.
It's not that the offense taken by Muslims is rational. It's that the American military were doing this as a morale booster - only now they've made things even worse. Doh!

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35. Comment #66053 by pewkatchoo on August 28, 2007 at 6:03 am

I seriously do not believe the people on here blaming the US military for this! Are you so slow of thought? Try using the ability to reason that you are so quick to trumpet as the standard of atheism. It is impossible to guess in what way you are maybe going to offend muslims. Even lifelong muslims themselves are often charged with offending allah and the faith. It is totally impossible to know what is offensive and what is not. Just consider that doing something will probably be offensive. Also doing nothing! You cannot win in the giving offense stakes.

Other Comments by pewkatchoo

36. Comment #66055 by Johnny O on August 28, 2007 at 6:15 am

Like Tumara and Veronique, I also think that America sometimes shoots itself in the foot with it's lack of understanding of other cultures.

Whilst I think this is true, I'd like to try and stick up for our American cousins. They are a fairly new country and in terms of the age of Western civilisation, they are very much the new kids on the block. They just happen to be a very big kid that has a stick.

Having served in the British Army I know that whenever we went overseas we were always briefed on local customs and what NOT to do. For example, always remove sunglasses when talking to locals, this helps with trust. In Africa, NEVER take a photograph without permission as some people think you are stealing their soul. In Bosnia, DON'T give the two fingered peace sign, this is a Bosnian salute and causes major offence to Croats and Serbs. (The same gesture with your thumb extended is a Serbian salute). In the Gulf we were told not to wave with our left hand, never show the soles of your feet. In Canada we were told not to dance in groups of the same sex... (I think this one was an overreaction myself).

My point being, there are lots of ways to offend a local populace and the main reason that Europeans know this better than the USA is that we have been stomping around giving "Johnny Foreigner a damn good thrashing", (Britain especially), for hundreds of years, we like to think we know better now, though I'm not so sure...

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37. Comment #66056 by Jonathan Dore on August 28, 2007 at 6:18 am

The breathtakingly low threshold for taking offence that seems to be characteristic in modern Islam -- so low that it takes in many obviously unintentional, and even well-intentioned, acts as well as those that are intended to prickle -- deserves some serious study. Islam may well particularly encourage this attitude, though it must be acknowledged that before the Rushdie affair in 1989 any offence felt by individual Muslims rarely had any international impact. I suspect that at some point since then this tactic -- of actively seeking out potential sources of offence, no matter how small, and then complaining about them as loudly and intemperately as possible -- was identified as being fruitful by Islamic religious leaders of a certain type, and has been systematically cultivated as a means of reinforcing group identity and group discipline, and furthering their political goals (i.e. destabilizing non-fundamentalist governments in Islamic countries and fomenting unrest among Muslims in the West). It would be interesting to know if any research has been carried out to document the growing use of this tactic as a political tool, and what the most effective means of comabatting it might be.

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38. Comment #66065 by bladesman on August 28, 2007 at 7:21 am

Try as I might to take this article seriously, all I keep getting are images of sheepish Yank troops knocking on Afghan doors going 'can we have our balls back then please?' :oD

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39. Comment #66078 by detox on August 28, 2007 at 11:25 am

It seems to me from the posts here that there are two reactions to this article. Either the Afghanis are being too sensitive or the Americans were being too insensitive. I have a certain amount of sympathy with both arguments.

However, put yourself in the shoes of an Afghan in Khost Province. For 25 years, first one, then another superpower has been blowing the shit out of your country to the point where there is no legitimate, functioning government, little infrastructure, no prospect of viable employment and when you get together to bury your dead the chances are you'll get bombed out of your village.
Then a big American helicopter comes along and drops some footballs for the kids to play with.
The Afghan looks up and says, 'Oh, that's allright then'.

America-bashing is easy if you want to vent your spleen but it has no apparent effect and becomes redundant. The fact is it wasn't the smartest move to make by the Americans. By the same token the Afghanis are being overly sensitive.

Perhaps instead of deploring dumb Americans and spikey Muslims we could try to suggest an alternative.

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40. Comment #66080 by Davin06 on August 28, 2007 at 11:50 am

Islamists offended? good f*** 'em

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41. Comment #66130 by Mysturji on August 29, 2007 at 1:40 am

What a load of bollocks!

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42. Comment #66134 by HunterZolomon on August 29, 2007 at 2:09 am

Sad and pathetic, no surprise there really.

In response to Jonathan Dores comment, all kinds of disgruntled groups other than fundie muslims have employed the offended strategy for years now. The breathtakingly low threshold for taking offence you speak of, is rampant in our own western societies today. It's not something exclusive to Islam, even though they use it vigorously. I suspect it's at least partly a result of years of western sensitivity training, courtesy of certain political movements.

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43. Comment #66159 by Jonathan Dore on August 29, 2007 at 5:31 am

HunterZolomon - thanks for your response. Yes, a somewhat parallel example in the West is the Zionist claim that any criticism of Israel must be motivated by anti-Semitism. But what I think is unusual about the Islamists' use of the tactic is the unashamed aggression of the response -- the naked threats (and acts!) of physical violence -- completely disproportionate to the triviality of the supposed "offences".

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44. Comment #66166 by logical on August 29, 2007 at 6:40 am

I like the idea of playing balls with flags...

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45. Comment #66171 by bluebird on August 29, 2007 at 7:00 am

Great balls of fire, interesting posts!
I've been humming the AC/DC tune for a while...

Steveroot, I too presumed it was 'American' football, esp. with the AFC & NFC making ready to duke it out.

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46. Comment #66173 by Tintern on August 29, 2007 at 7:25 am

Is it really BBC News that 100 people didn't like the footballs some kiddies got their hands on?

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47. Comment #66237 by Russell's Teapot on August 29, 2007 at 12:15 pm

Oh FFS Russel's Teapot, grow up. You cannot keep up with the things that these morons get offended by. We continually find new and unusual ways to offend them on a daily basis.

Ah yes, because it's such a stretch of the imagination to think for a second "Hey, might these people be offended by having their flag (which contains the name of a god that they're often spastic about) put on a ball that's going to be kicked around in the dirt?"

I'm not looking for policy makers or bureaucrats to tread on eggshells when it comes to these people, but for FSM's sake, show some common sense. Acting in the best interest of PR doesn't necessarily mean not having to cater to the ridiculous.

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48. Comment #66479 by glittergulch on August 30, 2007 at 5:23 am

So how many will die over this gross violation?

Other Comments by glittergulch

49. Comment #66508 by pewkatchoo on August 30, 2007 at 6:54 am

Russell's Teapot

I think you are wrong. If even the IOC could not figure out that sticking the Saudi flag on a football could cause offence how could the US military? The IOC has loads of muslims working for them, yet even they got it wrong. I say don't even bother trying to work out if you are causing offence, just it take it as a given that you are going to, whatever you do or don't do.

Personally, I have had enough of religious stupidity in general and Islamic stupidity in particular. I have had muslim friends in the past, but no longer. I just can't stand their particular brand of total mindlessness and irrationality.

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50. Comment #66515 by Philip1978 on August 30, 2007 at 7:31 am

Russell's Teapot, I understand with what you say but I think I am with pewkatchoo on this one in the sense that these guys are quite happy to froth about anything if it serves their purpose of making unbelievers look bad.

Perhaps a little thought should have gone into it, but I would imagine the US Military simply wanted the kids playing football to relieve them of the horrible environment they have to face everyday. Flags should be flags and its the mad adults fault that the kids have to see hatred spring out of a kind gesture.

Philip

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