Is the author merely stating fact resulting from the survey, or is he subtly berating Americans for their beliefs about Muslims which are proved opposite? Do the results of the survey match up to what most Americans would typically believe of Muslims?
Saturday, October 30, 2010
Group 5: What A Billion Muslims Really Think
Different from the previous blogs, this author's perspective is that of an everyday civilian with no direct military or family ties to Middle Eastern conflict. Khalid Jarrar, a young man living in Baghdad has written many posts depicting his point of view as he observes the Iraqi War. While this particular blog is very short and to the point, the reader is able to grasp a good idea of the author's attitude concerning his beliefs towards America and the recent study he describes. Though the background is simple and he focuses more on the opinions of the general population, the blog leaves much to be implied about his own thoughts.
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Thanks group 5 for posting this. I appreciated the point of view. I found the "about me" portion of the blog to be interesting. "I am pro God, I am pro life, I am pro humanity, I am pro truth" I think a lot of people assume and generalize that all Muslims hate America which only adds gas to the fire. This blog provided facts that proved that that is not true. The last fact even stated that Muslims just want to be respected. If only 1 out of 10 are liberal or radicals- that is stereotyping 90% of their people who think similarly to Americans.
ReplyDeleteI think there are the most comments on this blog compared to the others we have seen, which proves that the Muslim American relationship is controversial. But I think it is very important to see the other person's point of view esp. since they are a regular person- not involved in the military.
I also appreciated that this blog was not extravagant. It is simple and gives the facts. It doesn't have pictures trying to distract you from the real issues. The blog is very black in white in contrast to the issue it is addressing that is anything but simple.
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ReplyDeleteThis blog seems to bring forth another issue associated with comtemporary war which is xenophobia. People seemed to have stereotyped communities and directly associate these communities as being violent or relate terrorist organisations/activities back to them which has me puzzled because there are a lot of organisations that resort to violence the KKK(Kool Klux Klan), IRA(Irish Republican Army)and supremacist groups so with that frame of mind we could classify, the entire world, based on communities, as terrorists.Which is absolutely ridiculous
ReplyDeleteso this blog post attempts to somewhat change the way readers think by making them more aware through simple facts and statistics.
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ReplyDeleteI really like this blog for both its appearance and content. The simple and clean layout of this site actually conveys professionalism (this is very similar to how Google presents their page). It makes it direct and easy for the audience to comprehend the idea and information without being distracted by other details. It, however, does not mean a lack of images.
ReplyDeleteWe can notice that the blogger often have separated entries with a number of pictures, but no captions or any of his interpretation included. Yet the titles of these entries speak for themselves, and the writer's intention as well as opinion very clearly. For instance, in his "In the name of peace..." post, he showed four pictures of dead men, injured children and women. The contradiction in the word "peace" and these devastating images makes us question whether or not the war we are fighting is a just way to search for peace or it will just leave us with unending chaos. (See more: "What if that was your family? What if that was your house?")
This style of presentation and writing justifies his self-claim as a "pro truth" by not filling the every single post with a bundle of personal thoughts, emotions and convictions. He gives out facts and give people space to think for them.
On the other hand, he is still a strong anti American political and administration (I am not saying anti-America), and this, at certain points, drives him away from making well-balanced arguments. For example, in his "The Fourth Year" entry, he wrote: "The sad, hurtful truth, is that the one and only thing that works, and will work, is to cause the greatest harm possible to the American army in Iraq and other occupied countries, so much to the points that the politicians, the MPs that vote for the country budget, the media that are all facilitating the continuity of this occupation, are so afraid of the reaction of the other Americans, the good Americans, and believe that they will seriously kill them if they don't stop that occupation, only at that point, the occupation will end." This is just controversial enough that it has 150 comments. See it for yourself.
All in all, while, as Vignesh mentioned, this blogger does try to change the way people think about this war, and that not all Iraq and Muslims are violent and terrorists, sometimes, he actually caused quite the opposite effects by making certain harsh remarks.
I found Vignesh’s point of view very interesting, although I do not agree with her on some points. I do think there is stereotype in the contemporary world associating some specific groups with being violent for some political reasons. But I do not think that is what the post tries to say. I think the post is a retort to America’s, especially the Bush’s administration’s biased view upon Muslims. By starting the post with the background of Bush’s claim of Muslim, the author then talks about how the book was written. We can tell by the stats of the book that this is a reliable survey.
ReplyDeleteFor the findings listed in the post, it is easy to tell that it is directed against US. It puts Americans and Muslims together many times. Even though the number of findings listed is limited, I think the author found the most powerful ones. Some of those are proved to be opposite to Americans’ views on Muslims, and others implied that they against the current US policy on Iraq.
This is a wise post since it never expresses its opposition to US explicitly, but by stating credible facts and some skills in implication, the readers could easily generate the feelings that the author wishes to see.
This is a very interesting post coming from the viewpoint of an Iraqi who is not part of the military. The author is very exact and is not afraid to speak the truth about how he feels and I do like to see that, but he does not go to far over board to make me feel like he is attacking the U.S. or anything like that. I agree with Van Pham's comment about how clean and to the point the layout is for this blog. I feel that it does not distract the reader from what is in front of them, and makes them truly read the words that are being presented to them. I thought the post about Saddam being hanged was quite interesting. The author wrote quite a lot about it and was very passionate about his feelings. He agreed with the whole hanging, but he felt that Saddam should have been tried for all of the people whom he had killed, and I thought that was a great point. Even though many would not like this author for what he says, it brings about some truths that the U.S. should think about. Really this author says that the Iraqis and Afghanis just want to be in charge of their lives, and maybe that is what we should let them do.
ReplyDeleteThis Iraqi guy is really a great blogger. He has been updating his blog for years and he has already made huge numbers of posts. Just like Van Pham says, I agree to the thought of using the word "professionalism" to describe my feeling after viewing his blog.
ReplyDeleteBy using complete white as his blog background, the blogger indeed conveys us a kind of message that he cares about nothing else but writing articles about war, Iraq War. You can make it certain when you see his quite incisive personal profile. He uses the rhetorical method of parallelism printing several "pro" against one "anti", that makes it easy to have an idea of his attitude---he really hates American government. Besides, the countdown tool on top of his blog also contribute to conveying this information.
However, Jarrar is such professional and rational that he does not just write posts as an outlet. From the post "What a Billion Muslims really think" I find he is pretty good at writing war articles. I mean, he does not write very casually. Instead, he undoubtedly put a lot of effort writing articles which could be much more convincible. Incisive and strong profile with carefully-planned posts, these makes it an excellent blog for us to know sth from the perstective of an Iraq civilian---yes, this is a new angle towards Iraq War.
I really like the contrast from the previous blogs that this blog shows. In the other blogs we were either reading a blog from the perspective of a soldier in Iraq or a soldier’s family. However in this week’s blog we get to “see” things from a much different perspective, that of a civilian in Baghdad. Also, looking in to the authors profile I see that he is an educated man, a water and environment engineer. This makes him slightly more credible which is always good to see when dealing with blogs. Another reason that I enjoyed this blog is that it is much more simple then the other blogs in terms of fonts and colors. From what I saw there are no pictures and the format of the blog is one which is simple and user friendly. Also, the author mainly uses logical appeals rather than emotional appeals in the blogs that we saw before. For example the page that you see when you first access the blog (“What a Billion Muslims Really Think”) is fact rather than opinions, or pictures of births and weddings as seen in previous blogs. In the end, I find it interesting how group number 5 picked a blog that contrasted so much with the first ones. Thanks.
ReplyDeleteI found this to be one of the most credible blogs posted so far. As a few others have already mentioned, the simple layout of the blog gives it a very professional appeal, which immediatly makes me take the blogger more seriously. The blogger uses facts instead of his day to day experiences to get his point across. Through the facts, the reader gets a sense of what emotions the blogger is feeling towards the subject, without the blogger seeming overly biased. Overall, I believe the blog was very successful getting it's point across to its audience.
ReplyDeleteI found this blog to be really interesting and different than the other blogs that we have read as a class so far. I liked the way facts were posted, because they were quite interesting and they taught me a lot. The organization of the blog is really simple, and although it's clear and easy to read I find that blogs with more color and design draw me into the content. I agree with Kurt that it was interesting to see things from a different perspective, that of a civilian in Baghdad. The author presents ideas that are very strong points, and these points are good for a blog because there may be many controversial views. I think out of any of the blogs we have read so far, I would pick this blog to read again because I learned a lot from the reading. The facts that he presents justify his opinion, but he does not force the readers to think the way that he does or persuade them to agree. The author simply uses these facts as strong evidence to his claims. Unlike all of the other authors, he does not spill his deepest emotions and feelings and so there is not a personal feel to the piece, but sometime this is a good thing, and to me the blog seems more credible this way.
ReplyDeleteI also found his points to be interesting and from the tone and style of his posts, I got the sense that he knows exactly what he believes and has a very firm moral foundation. I noticed that at the top of the page there is a little calendar that is counting down the days until the US troops withdraw and it kind of just drives home the point that he is making, in that he does not want outside interference. The all white background and the plain set up of the site helped me focus my attention on the information. It was also nice to see that the author responded to the posts of his readers. Throughout the blog, he is comparing American beliefs and Muslim realities and it was really cool to see the different perspective.
ReplyDeleteI personally didn't find this blog interesting or intriguing. I thought the layout didn't have a lot of thought or time put into which makes me feel like I don't want to put the time into reading it. I think it was a good idea because of the perspective change. I just don't get any emotional tie so all the facts he presents reminds me of a history lesson. I find blogs with personal insight more appealing. The only thing personal I noticed he included was his about me but it was so blunt and straight forward that I felt like I didn't want to read what he had to say.
ReplyDeleteFINALLY! a blog that doesn't make me cringe. I Agree with Jackie, i love how this is not from a military perspective and is very professional. it's so clean cut, simple and to the point. I thoroughly enjoy this particular post. I feel that there are so many stereotypes affiliated with muslims and they aren't fair at all. There was a problem in my predominantly white high school, and a very serious, racial comment was made to a muslim student. it made so many people angry with how we allow our stereotypes to cloud our vision of the truth. I think it is important for tunnel visioned americans to see this survey and perhaps come to have a change of heart.
ReplyDeleteThe blogger uses news reports and facts rather than shooting out personal conviction.He’s more like a news reporter who reports for himself.But we can learn about his personal conviction from the facts he has selected to report.For example,in one post, he "reported" the miserable situation of 4.5 millions Iraqi orphans. We can see his concern for the future of Iraq.He quoted sociologists saying"a generation will grow up cultivated in an atmosphere of rebellious violence"."Violence and bloodshed will have negative mental effects on kids, and their personality, and it would be difficult for a generation to grow up in a healthy manner without the required environments.” .When he said"Muslims just want to be respected",I can also see why he is anti American political and administration .That's because he feels that the muslims haven't been respected.He is an engineer who loves reading religion, so I can tell that he has very strong religious belief and he's deeply identified with muslims, which explains his anger.
ReplyDeleteJust as many classmates have noticed, this blog attracts tons and tons of attention and the comments are controversial ,which makes this blog more interesting.Just like someone has recognized professionalism in this blogger,I have noticed nationalism. Clearly he likes his country and he's trying to do something for it. "We as a family still carry on our projects in supporting the Iraqi refugees families in Jordan and Syria as well as the IDPs inside Iraq, like we have been doing for years now." He's doing his part in rebuilding his country,he has strong religious faith and he mainly uses facts to express his opinion(as one commented:your blog is trustworthy),those are some of the reasons why his blog is so popular.
This is the first blog so far that’s more serious than our blog, except for some irrelevant comments obviously posted by trouble-makers. The pure white layout reflects the blogger’s straight, serious and professional attitude. Even in his profile, it seems that he doesn’t want to show any personal things. Maybe he’s hoping it to be a kind of learning discussion. Anyway, I think he adds credits to his information by this way and I take his article seriously.
ReplyDeleteWhen I hear of muslin, first thing that comes to my mind could be extremism and radicals. Actually, I don’t know about Islam. One of my friends said she never knew that Islam could have so many good and beautiful elements after she got to learn it. It should have, I think, for it has been accepted and worshiped for so long. But there also should be something that’s appealing to extremists. Or maybe the extremists use it for themselves while changing its original purpose? I don’t know. Moreover, the author said that “those who do choose violence and extremism are driven by politics, not poverty or piety.” I was told that the attacks were mainly due to the large gap between poverty and richness which stimulates hatred. Since the extremists are not driven by this reason, what about the politics? Uh, I’m not sure either. Back to the main topic, I never considered the real thoughts of muslims. In fact, it’s natural to believe most of them (1 out of 10) have the same dream like us, that is, to live a peaceful and happy life. This article still reminds me to correct the one-sided view towards muslims. And I’m happy to get this new information, thanks to group 5.
By the way, I suggest the blogger make his blog more personal, which won’t affect the quality of his statements and arguments. Besides, emotional appeals could vivify his articles.
This blog is very eye opening to me because I am one of those people who tends to get caught up in muslim jokes. Classifing them all as radicals ready to kill anyone who apposes them. But this blog statistacly shows that for the most part a very small portion of them actually think that way. Another reason I liked this blog is that it is more factual and less a story of one person or one families life.
ReplyDeleteI was really drawn in to this blog from the beginning. It gives really interesting facts about the similarities between Muslims and Americans and also just facts about Muslims.
ReplyDelete"It showed that Muslims and Americans are equally likely to reject attacks on civilians as morally unjustifiable." This is interesting to me because it shows that even though many Americans might have the impression that Muslims are all hateful and terroristic, we are very similar as people as to what our moral beliefs are.
What shows that the author is similar to Americans is what is written in his "about me." He is "pro God, pro life, pro humanity, and pro truth," not unlike many Americans.
I think what this blog is driving at is that Americans should not think that they are so different from everyone else, including Muslims.
I'm not sure how I feel about the use of pictures in this blog. Specifically the ones of children, dead or bloody or hospitalized. On the one hand, it's real. These are real children being harmed, and it should stop.
ReplyDeleteBut on the other hand, some of these photographs are really graphic... and they aren't shielded in any way. There's no warning. It just goes from happy wedding photos to dead kids on the same page. If I'm going to see those things, I would at least like to have a moments notice beforehand...