Is Islam Compatible with Modern Values?
When people ask whether Islam is compatible with modernity, they often assume Western liberalism as history’s endpoint. Islam does not exist to validate modernity; it exists to form an ethical life, challenge power, and expose the violence hidden inside “progress.”
In movies and books one dimensional, boring sort of characters, are those that never change throughout the story. Good stories contain character growth. A change in the character's world view. Think of Jake Sully in Avatar: He starts as a marine, ready to shoot and kill every living thing on Pandora. And end up being the leader of Pandoran resistance. On the internet people tend to think that other people are set in stone when it comes to their believes. That other people are one dimensional characters without character growth what so ever. If one is born with a flaw, or has a recorded history of a flaw, therefore, using the logic of the citizens of the internet, this flaw is unremovable, untouchable, and unchangeable truth representing this person's every second of existence. That is so silly. The world is full of character growth. The world is full of people learning new things. The world is full of people that change their mind.
@Gardenia @deuza42 @daliarezk @gomli @gazaverified Solène, a few points:
1. This isn’t about you, it’s about our friends in Gaza.
2. Our friends in Gaza are adults like us who can make their own decisions about things like whether they show their faces or share their photos on Mastodon, just like we do.
3. We can inform our friends in Gaza about privacy issues but we cannot tell them to do anything. We are not their parents. And they are not children. That’s a very paternalistic and, dare I say, colonial view.
4. By making it appear that they shouldn’t be sharing any photos of themselves, etc., there’s a very real danger of getting them to auto-erase themselves online while Israel is already trying to do that. There is a balance here that I believe you are missing. Their survival also depends on making genuine connections with people in the outside world. Your constant attempts to get them to stop sharing photos of their lives and experiences is pushing them to use AI-generated images, for example, which is making their accounts look like scammers. They are starting to make their accounts and posts look inauthentic, and helping contribute to their erasure. Which is what the Zionists want.
5. Our friends in Palestine have been living their entire lives under surveillance and know the risks better than we do. Privacy is about threat models. It’s an area I know a thing or two about myself having worked for a third of my life in it. Your efforts, while well meaning, are having a negative effect. Not least of all on our tiny team of volunteers whose limited time is spent dealing with your constant displeasure instead of helping our friends in Gaza.
Personally, I will be muting you as I do not have the time to function as your personal support department. We will also make it very clear that no one has the right to dictate how our Palestinian friends use Mastodon or the fediverse and that any advice is just that: advice.
And for anyone from the West reading this, please be careful not paternalise our friends in Gaza.
We do not know better than they do and we do not have the right to dictate a separate set of rules for them. We can advise them of existing rules and norms if violating them can have a negative impact on them and their accounts and we can try and help if they are persecuted for who they are but we do not get to tell them how to use Mastodon or the fediverse any more than we get to tell anyone from the West.
Gaza Verified simply verifies, via video calls where one of our volunteers from Gaza is present, that they are Palestinian from Gaza. And, if their account is limited or suspended for who they are, we will advocate on their behalf or help them move to a server that isn’t complicit in genocide. That’s it. That’s all we can do with a tiny team of volunteers. Verification is not a character reference. We are not their parents. And it is not our job, or anyone else’s, to tell them how they should be using Mastodon or the fediverse.
CC @fedipourgaza @fabio @casey @joynewacc @aseelfromgz @rania40
#GazaVerified #private #public #paternalism #Gaza #Palestine #mastodon #fediverse
Robert Noggle has revised his SEP-entry on The Ethics of Manipulation,
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ethics-manipulation/
What a savoury topic, even without explicit references to sycophantic AI!
#autonomy #coercion #manipulation #ethics #freeWill #decision #deception #lying #marketing #paternalism #filosofia #etiikka #philosophy #morality #oppression #nudges #person #sycophantic #ai #generativeAI #criticism #criticalThinking
Guess I'll give up on fish again for one single stupid reason: Its strict refusal to pass unmatched wildcards to commands like grep. No, I am not going to quote each and every regular expression just because this otherwise pretty bloated shell decides to be paternalistic on this topic.
Catholics for Catholics | https://cforc.com/
... creepy / cringey. These indoctrinated automatons would have no problem slaying you and picking over your bones ...
Honoring this piece of work: "transvestigator" 🤨 hate-monger Candace Owens
It gets worse after that screengrab ...
🇺🇲 🇬🇧 #Christofascism #antiLGBTQ+ #misogyny #paternalism #theocracy #tyranny
🇨🇦 #Poilievre #DanielleSmith #ScottMoe #Trumpism
#transgenocide 🏳️⚧️ #TLM #BTLM
https://mastodon.social/@persagen/114186381298087870
Trump’s Crusade: Christian Nationalism and the Making of a Holy War
https://www.counterpunch.org/2026/03/20/trumps-crusade-christian-nationalism-and-the-making-of-a-holy-war
What Joe Kent and Candace Owens Are Really Up to in Their Critiques of the Iran War
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/cafe/what-joe-kent-and-candace-owens-are-really-up-to-in-their-critiques-of-the-iran-war
Cashing in on hate ...
🇺🇲 🇬🇧 #Christofascism #antiLGBTQ+ #misogyny #paternalism #theocracy #tyranny
🇨🇦 #Trumpism
#transgenocide 🏳️⚧️ #TLM #BTLM
https://mastodon.social/@persagen/114186381298087870
Israel and the United States are now at war with Iran, a conflict framed by both leaders through a stark and self-serving moral binary. In the words of Benjamin Netanyahu, it is cast as a “necessary fight between good and evil.” For Donald Trump, the illegality of the war is beside the point. It is waged instead in the ideological spirit and cruelty of the Crusades, fueled by religious fervor and animated by what David Smith writing in The Guardian, has called a celebration of the “capacity to inflict violence.”
'Agent of chaos' Peter Thiel lecturing on Antichrist at Vatican's doorstep 🤨
https://www.advocate.com/news/religion/peter-thiel-antichrist-vatican
Thiel attacks Catholic Church leader as a "woke American pope" eerily similar to a South Park parody
MAGA aesthetics and fascist power: Spectacles of white supremacy
https://links.org.au/maga-aesthetics-and-fascist-power-spectacles-white-supremacy
On the Brink of World War Trump
https://thetyee.ca/Analysis/2026/03/18/Trump-Iran-War-Strait-Hormuz-Grim-Consequences/
🇺🇲 🇬🇧 #Christofascism #antiLGBTQ+ #whiteSupremacy #misogyny #paternalism #theocracy #tyranny
🇨🇦 #Trumpism
🇺🇲 Christofascist cesspool: Evangelical holy war - Why some Christians think Trump will end the world
https://theconversation.com/evangelical-holy-war-why-some-christians-think-trump-will-end-the-world-277617
Whistleblowers Speak Out About Religious Extremism in Military Amid War on Iran
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yijk3N1t7yo
🇺🇲 🇬🇧 #Christofascism #antiLGBTQ+ #whiteSupremacism #misogyny #paternalism #theocracy #tyranny
🇨🇦 #Poilievre #DanielleSmith #ScottMoe #Trumpism
#transgenocide 🏳️⚧️ #TLM #BTLM
https://mastodon.social/@persagen/114186381298087870
"Instead of seeing authoritarianism as inherently gendered and violent, as an inevitable feature of patriarchy, as a system that justifies itself by co-opting any moral framework, you view it as either “uniquely Islam”, an “Abrahamic religions issue”, or “proof that all religions are oppressive.” Why don’t you name a secular, non-authoritarian, non-misogynistic nation-state, then?"
Share this with your imperial feminist friends.
#feminism #liberalfeminism #muslimfeminism #islam #authoritarianism #patriarchy #paternalism #iran #palestine #indonesia #secularism #pluralism #panislamism #marxism #orientalism #edwardsaid
WRZKY
Blender Dumbass
Aral Balkan
Lupposofi
Mathias Hasselmann
Victoria Stuart 🇨🇦 🏳️⚧️
Wanda 
