RE: Steemit Workshop: educating new users in Lhokseumawe, Aceh
This workshop is a very good idea.
Maybe it would be useful as well, to advice your fellow Steemians not to jump to conclusions or start commenting, in case they didn't understand the content of an article: just now I got aware of this article where @deniandepa mentions me as possible racist(!) because of my last article.
In this article I am actually defending moderate Muslims against prejudices (and after that was discussing for hours with some German Steemians trying to convince them).
But obviously some people are always complaining or feel insulted, even if one tries to help them, unbelievable ...
@deniandepa doesn't understand German at all, his English is very bad, in addition he used something like Google Translate which is not able to translate complicated articles correctly ... but nevertheless he dares to call me a racist and mentions my article as a bad example in his post.
Sorry, I'm late to read your comments. The issue of abuse by lexiconical has troubled the Muslim Steemians. I also disagree with lexiconical's article and I have left comments there. I'm sure of your neutrality.
I agree with you, maybe he (deniandepa) did not understand German well.
First of all: I calmed down again (somewhat). :-)
However, I still think it is really inappropriate to mention my post with the words "smells of racism" and a big screenshot in an article where one complains about racism. That's not really contributing to my reputation in this community, is it?
I am well aware that one can misunderstand the content if one doesn't know the language and only uses programs to translate it (but then one can simply ask instead to conclude anything wrong). For example in the last paragraph I was writing about people who always want their prejudices to be confirmed:
This paragraph criticizes people with prejudices ... it doesn't criticizes Muslims ...
Sorry that I opened this under your article. I did it because you are a friend and I guess you are well known in your Acehnese community, so I just wanted to let you know that
a) @deniandepa is just completely wrong, and
b) what my article was really about: it was a text against prejudices, which suggests instead of using them, to evaluate humans by their words and actions (independently of their religion or country).
I also wrote that we shouldn't precondemn anybody and instead of that support peaceful-minded, cosmopolitan Muslims to strengthen their position within the Muslim community of Germany.
After writing this article I had to discuss a long time with some Germans who insisted that there were no cosmopolitan Muslims at all, but I insisted that there are ...
So I used hours of the afternoon to defend Muslims just to read later that I was called a (possible) racist ... Maybe you understand now why I felt some anger ...
Concerning @lexiconical I don't know his articles. In case he attacks Muslims in general his attitude is completely different than mine.
However, even then I think he has the right to express his opinion. You and I have the right to strongly disagree with him and contradict (to use good arguments is more effective than trying to suppress another opinion). That's called "freedom of speech", and I think we have to deal with that (we have not to agree of course, and we should use our right of free speech as well). The sense of free speech is to prevent dictatorship which only allows these opinions the dictator accepts and agrees with. As long as people are not insulting each other (everybody is responsible to try to discuss in a constructive, not destructive way) I think one should try to accept other opinions.
Sorry for the long text ...