I think many Saudi men would take issue with the notion that they have true operational “absolute power” in their households. Effectively, women run the households in many Arab cultures, and men for all their “absolute power” are often deferential to their decisions.
OK, I’ll take 50% and you give me the other 50%. 
Thanks for clarifying your feelings on the issue, Paul. I apologize for being snarky. (But I do still disagree with a number of other things you’ve said about Saudi in the past, but whatever.)
Sigh
And this comment is relevent to…what exactly?
Certainly not to my point. Which is that while torture and burning and auto da fe were at one point part of Christian society (do you argue that?) they are not integral to the Christian faith. Any more that sexism and abuse are a part of Islam.
Care to actually argue my point rather than make comments out of left feild?
Wow… You are an idiot and an asshole. For a while I thought you were just an asshole. Thanks for clearing that up.
And how many Christian countries practice these barbaric acts today? None. So it’s completely irrelevant when discussing Islamic countries today, unless you are claiming that the abuse talked about in this thread is a figment of the imagination.
So you say. From what I understand about mainstream Islam, I would tend to agree with you, but some people who are practicing that religion today do think that sexism and abuse are an integral part of it, along with torture and murder. Fred Phelps does terrible, unchristian things in the name of Christianity as he practices it. That doesn’t mean that I am going to condemn mainstream Christianity or churches not affiliated with Phelps for his actions, but that also doesn’t mean that I am going to ignore the role that his Christianity plays in his motivations and deeds.
Your “point” was a complete strawman, and I treated it as such. 1000 years ago, the Muslim world was a beacon of education, enlightenment and tolerance while the Christian world was sunk in the mire of the dark ages. So what? While I appreciate historical perspectives on issues (I am a historian by training and education after all), what some people in Christian countries did or did not do centuries ago has absolutely no bearing on what some people in Muslim countries are doing today.
No problem, happy to be of service. It makes me happy when I get a chance to reach out to some of the little people around here.
People, whether Fred Phelp-ish Christians, some Muslim guy is Saudi Arabia, or an aetheist scientiist in Japan, tend to pull in whatever cultural threads they can find to support their behavior. That’s nothing new.
As to whether Islam or the culture of Saudi Arabia is more supportive to domestic violence than others, I don’t know. Probably to some degree. But this kind of problem is almost impossible to measure, let alone stop.
Oh, please. I misinterpreted a stat in my OP and used that for my lead. When people called me on it, I admitted I was wrong about it – the first thing you have to do to fight ignorance is admit when you’re wrong, something I don’t see a lot of on the Dope. And one of the reason I don’t see a lot of it on the Dope is because asses like you tee off on people when they admit to being wrong. Fuck you.
BTW, there’s nothing lame about my OP. Domestic violence is a big problem in Saudi, and every last cultural convention in the place contributes toward concealing it.
Sure, people called me on my misinterpretation of the OP, and I admitted I was wrong about that, but I still think the story points to a huge hidden problem of domestic abuse in Saudi Arabia and I suspect in Muslim countries generally (though to a lesser extent in many of them). This whole concealment of women thing has always stank to high heaven.
Thanks for the tu quoque. Now, tell me, what constitutes “sexual abuse” in that report? Are we talking rape or a pat on the fanny when the wife/girlfriend didn’t feel like being patted on the fanny?
That was admitting you were wrong? It sounds more like an attempt at using sarcasm to deflect attention from your mistake.
Ooh, that just ain’t right. :mad:
Well, if you look it up it lists rape, domestic abuse, sexual abuse, and assault. And on this page (the actual source of the survey) says the percentage is 39%.
All I’m saying here is that we have a lot of violence towards women in our own country. Using a broad brush to say Islamists are prone to that type of behavior is not entirely the truth. They may turn a blind eye to it more than we do, but the percentages in that religion versus others may not be that different. It seems to run quite strongly with Christians as well, I would venture to guess it’s like that in nearly all religions (known or unknown).
Just watch the generalizations, mkay?
Yep. I’m pretty sure all he has done is *claim *that he admitted he was wrong. Which is different from actually doing it.
I’m one of the more left-leaning liberal posters on this board.
However, I will admit to having a “something-less-than-positive” view of Islam and the Middle-East. The OP made a statement based on a mis-interpretaion of the cited article which I think is not sufficient reason for other Dopers to have such indignant outrage (even if this is “the Pit”).
Heck, wasn’t it a year ago that everyone on the SDMB was “up in arms” over the fact that a 16 year old Iranian girl was hanged because she removed her headscarf in court and acted “uppity”? My point is that even if the cited source may not be the most reliable and if the facts were mis-interpreted, does this invalidate the truth of the OP’s topic?
As I’ve said in other Pit threads, feel free to pounce on this posting.
I don’t think anybody’s denying that modern Islamic cultures in many cases have some serious social problems, including systematic oppression of and violence towards women. Nor that many of the people causing those problems do use their interpretation of the Muslim religion to justify their behavior.
Just as nobody can deny that many Christian cultures a couple hundred years ago and more had serious social problems that also included systematic oppression of women, nor that they often used their interpretation of Christianity to justify their behavior. (In fact, in pre-modern times there were many Muslim cultures that typically recognized more rights for women than contemporary Christian cultures did.)
The point is that you can’t logically conclude that violence and oppression are therefore somehow intrinsic to Islam, any more than you can say that they’re intrinsic to Christianity. And that’s why the examples of pre-modern Christian barbarism are not, pace Weirddave, “completely irrelevant” when discussing examples of modern Islamic barbarism.
(And let’s not forget that one of the reasons Christian societies cleaned up their acts in the modern period was the influence of rationalist ideas about human rights propounded in many cases by Enlightenment deists or atheists. It is supremely arrogant for critics of modern Islam to act as though Christianity should get all the credit for reforming oppressive practices in Christian cultures.)
Did this study acknowledge that in many cases of domestic violence, it is both partners who are violent with each other?
I mentioned this news stories to my assembled co-workers this afternoon. I have to give them credit for mid-Ramadan bitchiness, but still I was disappointed (if not surprised) by their reaction.
They told me that when this first happened, the Saudi people were very sympathetic, but the woman went on the Oprah show to denounce Saudi Arabia and Islam. That went to far (for them).
She is (they say) an embarrassment to her nation and religion. (At this point there was much fluttering of the backs of hands, ‘shoo, shoo.’) They also questioned if she in fact left the Kingdom, since it takes twelve days to get a French visa, and since she most likely did not have her passport. They also mentioned she could not have left the Kingdom without her children.
There was no mention of a Zionist plot however. So I guess that is progress.
Why can’t we make that assumption? Religions evolve over time. 500 years ago, such practices were intrinsic to much of Christianity, today they are not. They are still intrinsic to much of Islam today. Why the reluctance to simply call a spade a spade?
If you’re talking in a historical context, maybe. Otherwise, no I don’t buy it. Christian societies “grew up” WRT their barbarism, most Islamic societies have not. Until they do, they are fair game for criticism of their actions and attitudes.
I don’t think Christianity itself had a damn thing to do with it. But where are all of those “rationalist ideas about human rights propounded in many cases by Enlightenment deists or atheists” in Islamic countries? The fact that they seem to be missing (actually, they’re not, there is a growing movement towards moderation and modern political thought WRT rights in Islamic countries. It’s one of the things driving the fundamentalist Islamic movement in a classic backlash effect. “Missing in most cases until now” is a more accurate way of stating the case.) in Islamic countries is certainly relevant.
That “growing up” process is secularization, which is inevitable as a culture beomes industrialized.
Many Islamic cultures still have the mindset of Midieval Christians: religion is the focus of their lives, and it directs everything they do. Wealth and industrialization will change that, but it’s a slow process. It develops along with the economy.
People will start getting jobs, and will become concerned with the daily petty things which so consume the mind of working people. They will have disposable income and will start upgrading their posessions. They will get cable. Their kids will start listening to Britney Spears and buying blue jeans. They may still hold their faith very strongly, but they will no longer have as much time to devote to it. They will want peace so their orderly lives (and cash flow) are not disrupted.
I do not judge them. Every culture has its ugly side.
… I’ll bite… cite?