On Wed, Mar 10, 2010 at 7:47 AM, Bryen M. Yunashko <suserocks@bryen.com> wrote:
On Tue, 2010-03-09 at 12:31 -0800, N B Day wrote:
Over the weekend and as recently as early today, Tuesday 9 March, an individual has posted several messages in the opensuse-en list which have the following text appended to them as a tag line:
----------------------------------------------------------- “The sword of Muhammad and the Qur'an are the most fatal enemies of civilization, liberty and truth which the world has ever known - an unmitigated cultural disaster parading as God's will.” --Sir William Muir ------------------------------------------------------------ Message ID 4B91DFA$.4010402, 4B9327B7.6030506, 4B960398.90500
The (far too kind, in my opinion) Wikipedia article on William Muir is here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Muir A quotation from Muir on Islam is pretty well analogous to a quotation from Karl Luegner on the Jews or George C. Wallace on the virtues of African-Americans. Not likely to be fair and balanced.
These sentiments borrowed from Muir were not germane to the topic underthe quotation of discussion, nor could they possibly be on a list devoted to helping English-speaking openSUSE users world wide use and enjoy this wonderful distribution.
I cannot imagine what purpose the poster might have had in posting no fewer than three copies of this appalling bit of 19th century bigotry other than to make people who follow Islam or come from Islamic cultures feel discriminated against and unwanted in opensuse-en. It doesn't contribute anything, it doesn't inform, it didn't have anything to do with the topic; it's just a vile bit of slime which is designed to cause hurt to approximately one quarter of humankind.
I complained to the list owner early on Sunday, my time. I have had no response. As I said above, the postings continue.
I addressed this in the off-topic forum (where ad hominims are on-topic) and the consensus among participants there was that I am a stupid prig and should just shut up. In the wake of this I have been favored by a large number of unsolicited private emails from some of the same people putting the point that I am a stupid prig even more forcefully. Twit filtering is so easy now that I'm not really bothered by it; I am surprised at the number and vehemence of them.the quotation of
I suggest a thought experiment for those here who may agree that I'm just a stupid prig: substitute "Jesus and the Bible" or "Judah Maccabee and the Torah" for "Muhammad and Qur'an" in the above.
The final section of the OpenSUSE Guiding Principles reads in part as follows:
"We believe that a diverse community based on mutual respect is the base for a creative and productive environment enabling the project to be truly successful. We don't tolerate social discrimination and aim at creating an environment where people feel accepted and safe from offense."
Complete text is here: http://en.opensuse.org/Guiding_Principles
How is it that someone is allowed to post the paragraph quoted above repeatedly on the opensuse-en list without comment or objection from anyone? How does permitting this comport with the Guiding Principles?
Are they just a bunch of high-sounding empty words?
-- N. B. Day 39° 28.3964' North, 119° 48.6346' West, 1403m up Aurelius up 3 days 0:56, 2 users, load average: 0.08, 0.03, 0.01 Linux 2.6.31.12-0.1-desktop openSUSE 11.2 (x86_64) Gnome 2.28.2
Thank you for bringing this to our attention. From the preliminary information I have received from others on this subject after your email arrived, I too am deeply disturbed by what has transpired.
I will be requesting the Board review this matter and determine appropriate action in the very near future.
It is important that this Board decision be made public (on this thread?) Ideally the Board's full reasoning should also be given so that people can be fully informed about how the guidelines are interpreted, and then applied. Mark
Sincerely, Bryen M Yunashko openSUSE Board Member
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