You seem to think apples and oranges can not or should not be compared. You are very wrong. Not only can they be compared in terms of obvious characteristics- they all grow on trees and they are both types of fruit- apples and oranges have been subjected to rigorous scientific comparison. cite
"Not only was this comparison easy to make, but it is apparent from the figure that apples and oranges are very similar. Thus, it would appear that the comparing apples and oranges defense should no longer be considered valid. This is a somewhat startling revelation. It can be anticipated to have a dramatic effect on the strategies used in arguments and discussions in the future.
Sorry, there doesn’t seem to be a ‘serious’ smiley, so you’ll just have to take my word that I’ve got my serious face on.
I still must consider your view (and more to the point, that of the OP) to be bigoted.
That’s not an either/or proposition. You seem to be contending that the Islamic religion is responsible for the 80% or so of Egyptian poll respondents who express support for nasty thigs like stoning of adulterers and killing of apostates. Yet, from the data that you yourself posted in the related Pit thread, we see the following:
[Quote=NCDane]
Percentage of Muslims in countries polled favoring capital punishment for apostasy:
5 Turkey
84 Egypt
86 Jordan
6 Lebanon
30 Indonesia
76 Pakistan
51 Nigeria
Percentage of Muslims in countries polled favoring stoning for adultery:
16 Turkey
82 Egypt
70 Jordan
23 Lebanon
42 Indonesia
82 Pakistan
56 Nigeria
[/Quote]
So, given the above, how do you explain the wide variation from country to country? is Islam a completely different religion in Turkey and Indonesia? Is it at all possible that there may be other cultural factors, such as level of education and/or income, in play here?
For me, to take a limited subset of behaviors and attempt to assign those behaviors to everyone in a much larger, arbitrarily-defined group is bigotry. Perhaps you have a different definition.
You seem to be blaming Islam for the beliefs of the Egyptian poll respondent assholes, while you are not blaming Christianity for the beliefs of the Westboro Baptist assholes. That’s a significant difference, and relative numbers do seem to be a determining factor in your mind.
And yet it is on the books right now and can be imposed UNTIL the “courts” strike it down again. Thus, it is clear that there is a significant portion of the US population that are OK with imposing death on someone who never killed anyone. Your “will be struck down by the courts” is special pleading to ignore this bloodthirsty trait. It’s there. Should those people ever become the majority in the US such executions will occur. Perhaps we should ban these people from voting or otherwise interfere with their rights as democratic citizens to ensure they never achieve any political power.
If you aren’t willing to impose such a thing on the US you should not be suggesting it for another nation. To do so makes you hypocritical.
If you’re going to equate people who favor the death penalty for murderers with people who favor the death penalty for being gay you’re really going to have to read up on how laws in this country work.
It doesn’t matter if a majority of the US believes something should be the law. If the Supreme Court says it’s unconstitutional then it’s not the law.
Moreover, favoring the death penalty for aggravated rape against children, while wrong is not remotely comparable to executing German Jews for violating the Nuremberg Laws.
Now, I understand that you were outraged when Americans were condemning Uganda’s “Kill the gays” bill a few months back and are upset now when we criticize Iran for executing gay people or members of the Bahai faith.
Also, since you’ve made it clear that people who advocate for the death penalty for murderers have no right to criticize other countries for executing people who break that countries laws, I’m sure you were outraged when you found out that during the Nuremberg Trials, Nazis were tried for the killing of not just non-German Jews, but of German Jews who’d violated Germany’s laws.
I’m sure you were disgusted that the US tried and punished German judges who’d proscribed the death penalty for German Jews and other Germans who violated the Nuremberg race laws.
However, most of us don’t think the world is so simple and don’t have such a manichean way of looking at the world.
To most of us, comparing people who advocate the death penalty for murderers or those who’ve been guilty of multiple aggravated rapes of children to Iran executing people for being gay or “abandoning Islam” is utterly asinine.
Sadly, no. I don think we are going to see the development of an Egyptian democracy anyi e soon. I don’t think the current protesters are representative of the larger Egyptian underclass. I see chaos and then an eventual government dominated by the Brotherhood. tuis will result in tension and confusion throughout the region.
I am well aware of how the laws work in this country.
What you don’t seem to realize is that I feel it is just as wrong to execute someone for murder as for being gay or being apostate. While the Nazis were guilty of horrific crimes no crime justifies executing someone. None. The only justification for taking a human life is self-defense and if you can safely contain a criminal for life then you have no moral or ethical leg to stand on for execution. Life in prison should have been the punishment meted out at Nuremberg, not state-sanctioned murder.
You’re trying to plead that some executions are special cases. There are none. All state executions are wrong, period. You’re just so used to living in a country where the government murdering people is accepted as just that you can’t see it. You make all sorts of excuses, including “it will never be enforced”. Seriously, when was the last time someone in Egypt was executed for apostasy?
You point to the most extreme examples of Islam to make Muslims boogeymen but dismiss the extremists in your own country. That’s what makes you a hypocrit. You also ignore that to many Muslims rejecting Islam is as great a crime as raping a child. YOU don’t believe that, I don’t believe that, but THEY believe that. They’re not going to change their minds because some outside agency takes offense.
Not to mention you’ve totally missed some other offenses, such as the 95% FGM rate among Egyptian women. That you might be able to construct an argument that there is something wrong with their society we can all agree on. But really, this attempt of yours to drag in the Nazis to somehow convinced me it’s OK when we murder people but not OK when they do it is just not going to work.
Do you have any good reason to state that “the Brotherhood” does not represent the larger Egyptian underclass? While that particular organization may be a bit specific, it seems pretty clear that there is a strong and broadly based desire for a state founded on Islamic principles.
I, for one, think it might be a good thing to start working on a modern Islamic state. If there is a demand for Islamic states, perhaps it can be possible to have one that offers political freedoms, a version of sharia law that includes the mundane contract law and family law while shelving some of the harsher criminal stuff, and a political process that falls within the realm of “democratic.”
The heck with democracy. What I want to know is what or whom is going to keep weapons given to Egypt from the USA for the Mubarak regime, from falling into the hands of Islamofascists and/or terrorists of any type.
Well, this thread is about Egypt. If you want to start a thread about weapons on the hands of the Israeli’s go ahead, but let’s not hijack the thread. No one is taking over Israel, that I know about.
Which kinds of Islamofascists? Any and all that are out there are fair game…you know, like the fellow Egyptians who were responsible for 9/11.
Oh, that’s right…it wasn’t Egyptians…Jews were behind 9/11, or Bush was behind it, or well, pick your conspiracy theory of choice…sorry I even asked.
Broom, as I said you have an exceptionally Manichean view of the World.
Since you’ve just admitted that you think that the Nazis who executed German Jews for breaking German Law should have gotten life imprisonment you also favor putting Judge Robert Jackson who ordered the execution of Nazis as well as life imprisonment for Bill Clinton for executing people while Governor of Arkansas.
To feel otherwise would be hypocritical and since you’ve accused me of being a hypocrite, you’re not one.
Also, I’m a bit confused by your strawman argument where you accused me of attacking Muslim boogeymen when I did no such thing and “excusing extremists” in my “own country”.
I’m an Iranian citizen and I extensively criticized Iran in my posts and have defended Islam against unfair charges.
Finally if you’re going to imply I’m an anti-Muslim bigot don’t make offensively stupid and bigoted statements like “95% of all Egyptian women” have FGM.
If you really believe that then you know nothing about Egypt.
An older meta-study on “female sexual castration” presented in 1989-MAR showed that five surveys conducted between 1977 and 1985 estimated that 80.5% of Egyptian women in Cairo and Alexandria had undergone FGM. 4
During 2007-JUN, Ahmad 'Aliwa, a women’s rights activist, described one finding that shows the near universal practice of FGM in Egypt, noting:
“The Center for Social Studies conducted a survey which showed that 85% of the prostitutes in Egypt were circumcised. There is no relation between female circumcision and the girls’ behavior.” 5
A 2005 report by UNICEF suggested that 97% of Egyptian women between the ages of 15 and 49 who have never been married have undergone some form of FGM or circumcision.
Yes, I know FGM is not explicitly mandated by Islam in so many words, but since any moral issue in a Muslim country is to some extent bound up in Islam, since there is no separation of Church and State. . . . . . .
I SAID it was not limited to Islam, didn’t I? And if you don’t believe UNICEF, find a better source. But in the long run, I really do not care what Muslims do to one another in the Islamic world.
It is the defense of the West and our freedoms that concerns me.
Well, for starters “Egyptians” did not participate in 9/11. ONE Egyptian, Muhammad Atta, did.
Second, I’m not a troofer so please don’t imply that I am one.
Third, classifying the 9/11 hijackers or Al Quaeda as “Islamofascists” makes very little sense.
Fascists are hard-core blood-and-soil nationalists. You could make the case that Al Fatah or the Ba’athists are fascists but classifying Hamas, Hezbollah, or Al Quaeda as fascists makes no sense since all are very strongly anti-nationalist organizations.
Al Quaeda is made of up of members of many different nationalities including huge numbers of non-Arabs amongst it’s top members. Despite being an overwhelmingly Arab organization, pledges loyalty to a Persian.
This doesn’t make them better than the other groups I listed but it’s one of the main reason that classifying them as “Islamofascists” makes little sense.
Fourth, my point was not to besmirch Israel by referring to Lieberman as a Judeofascist(though I think in his case the term is very applicable). My point was that “Islamofascist” is largely a term that’s been adopted to rather cynically try and compare Muslim radicals and sometimes people who aren’t Muslim radicals(Saddam Hussein) to the Nazis.
Now, as I’m sure you’re very aware, there were lots of people who made very compelling cases that the Irgun were fascists and the Irgun eventually became the Likud Party, which now currently is the leading political party in Israel.
That said, I’m pretty sure you’d object to classifying Netanyahu as a fascist, the Likud party as fascist, and you don’t strike me as a fan of Israel Shahak.
Yeah, Muslims are free to do their own thing in their own countries. Here in the USA, genital mutilation isn’t allowed. If you want to practice it, stay in the damn country where it is legal and accepted, but don’t try to make such atrocities legal here in the USA, using Sharia Law to overtake the constitution as you have managed to screw up the legal system in England with your barbaric ideologies.
Hey buddy boy, one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter, don’t you get that yet? Israel isn’t in the throes of being overthrown because they have been ruled by a autocrat for so long, the Egyptians don’t know what hit them. 9/11 hijackers are Egyptian and stop trying to change history. I know, the Mossad caused 9/11…you rag heads are so damn nervy…changing history everytime you find it convenient.
The vast majority of Muslims DON’T practice FGM, which is for your information illegal in Egypt.
Now, if you’re going to complain about “Sharia law” “screwing up the legal system in England” I assume you’re aware of how similar Israeli law is to Israeli law.
Does Israeli have civil marriage?
Can Jewish Israelis marry Israeli Arabs in Israel?
so you are dishonest in your presentation and when called on it, you complain. It is incredible, this.
You are not about defending it is about bigotry.
So advance this
Which is nothing but trying to lie about the conditions, as you know that FGM is most widespread in many Christian African communities and it not seen in the great majority of Muslim countries. It is Africa and nothing to do with Islam, but you try to slime and smear with great dishonesty.
No Muslims are trying to make this legal at all. Why do you lie about this? It is a practice that is traditional and widely condemned. There is much irrational bigotry here about Muslims.