I found this really interesting. She makes some really good points. It there is any interest, this could move to GD, but I don’t really have a particular debate to propse per se.
http://break.com/index/arab-woman-takes-on-muslim-cleric2.html
We just don’t get to hear from a secular Arabs very often.
BTW, can anyone vouch for the translation?
[admiration]Day-um. Chick’s got balls.[/admiration]
No vouch for the translations, but they’re not atypical of the current affairs debates on Al Jazeera English (it’s the Al Jazeera logo in the clip). I tend to watch the channel quite a lot, 514 on Sky for any Brits who didn’t know it was there, especially when the BBC and CNN are getting overexcited about minor issues in the Labour party or Congress or something.
Wow. That was amazing. That is how you prove a point! She made her points respectfully, and never resorted to saying “I have no need to talk to you” (not an exact quote) like the man she was debating. Show just how stupid the mindset he has is, and show examples of other groups and how they went about gaining respect. [Naive Mode]It would be wonderful if it made a difference in even one person’s mind [NM]
Preach on, sistah!
At first I read that as “Arab woman paws Muslim cleric”.
That is all.
Brother, you can believe in stones as long as you don’t throw them at me.
In the context of the current state of the middle east, that woman’s got balls the size of Mecca. And she’s absolutely right. The sad thing is that fanatical religious beliefs almost always preclude the ability to hear anything resembling common sense when it goes against that which they believe devoutly. As right, as sensible, and as skilled a debater as she is, it is doubtful that her arguments will be heard anywhere near where they need to be heard to change anything.
I can’t vouch for it personally, but I know of several Arabic speakers who have seen the full program (not the edited clip you have linked) and say that the translation provided at the link above is distorted and incomplete. You can find a complete translation and detailed discussion here.
I read the transcript and a large chunk of the discussion in the link, and it seems that most of the video was pretty close, but there were 12 pages of debate in the transcript, so obviously there is a lot more discussion that was left out of the video. Heretic is also translated as atheist in the transcript, and the discussion seems to be a big can of worms about how the video was translated and what was said.
That all said, I agree with most of the stuff she said in the transcript, and the cleric makes a few idiotic statements about gays, “Zionists” and Christians that reflect pretty poorly on him.
The transcript is really interesting, and worth reading assuming their translation is correct.
Don’t you wonder why that is?
There’s a brief video here on moderate vs. extremist Muslims.
Is it really true that we don’t often hear from ‘secular Arabs’ very often? Or is it just that if they’re not paired up against a hard-line Islamist, we see them primarily as a Lebanese politician, or a Baghdad vox-pop, or whatever the context it?