I note that you picked the easiest thing to “debunk” (while pretending that the Arabs were not the source that actually contributed to the European development) and seem to have missed such minor mathematical contributions as Symbolic Algebra. (Note, I do not overstate the situation by claiming that algebra was invented by Muslim mathematicians, only that they contributed to the development.)
The rest of your list is equally misleading and seems to have been taken from one of the many anti-Islam sites that have popped up in the last few years that either denigrate or dismiss actual contributions for the purpose of pretending that Europenas did everything on their own. ::: shrug :::
Religions are what the religious do. In the UK, to a great degree, that is what Islam is. As all religion is made up nonsense I don’t see any value in looking at the various ways people interpret old books or how they might have acted in the past.
What happens is what is done now. And in this current Now, Islam is not a liberal ideology anywhere in the world let alone among the men who make up sharia courts in the UK.
To get back to the main topic, couldn’t British courts say, “While we agree with the principle of private arbitration in many cases, Sharia law is so counter to English law and so deficient in the area of human rights that we cannot allow it to be a basis for arbitration”?
I mean, suppose some English folk wanted to go back to the old tradition of trial by fire, etc., in private arbitration. I imagine the courts might have something to say about that. And sharia law isn’t all that advanced beyond trial by fire in its treatment of women.
Indeed; this provides us with an excellent opportunity to point out that it’s not just what you cite that matters, but how. If Aquila Be had been making a point about Avicenna himself, for example, they might have been persuasive. Unfortunately, he was making a sweeping statement about the non-existence of Arabic and Islamic contribution to the body of human knowledge, something his cites did not remotely support. Indeed his first one pretty much rubbishes his entire point in making explicit the Arabic connection involved in our modern numeral system.
Just because a claim has links in it doesn’t make it well referenced, and dismissing the claim does not require denigration of the links. To give Aquila Be full credit, however, I can’t find any anti-Islam site from which he cribbed his post, so it’s probably original rubbish.
You know, I’m pretty sure we have a rule somewhere about not setting people on fire. It was brought in by the “Not Setting People On Fire Act” of 1957, to some controversy. Nonetheless, I think we’ve got it covered. Got any less completely weird objections?
Other than children, the mentally disabled, and women raised in an Islamic cultural environment, which other groups should not be granted the freedom to enter contracts?
Dude, you’re not seeing the smoke for the fire. My point, less colorfully put, is that medieval concepts of jurisprudence have been pruned out of English law over the centuries, and if somebody tried to backdoor them into law via arbitration, I’m sure there would be many objections. Why then is it OK for sharia law, which is medieval in certain respects, especially with regard to the treatment of women, to be backdoored into the English legal system via arbitration?
Because generally, as long as the arbitration is consented to by all parties, the state doesn’t consider it their business. If the woman feels the system of arbitration would be unfair to her, she’s free to refuse arbitration and pursue the dispute through legal channels.
Dude, you’re just making stuff up, and ignoring what’s there. This does not in any way replace any existing British law. It is about the right of consenting parties to have minor matters arbitrated in the manner of their choosing. Any ruling that is incompatible with British law will be - get this - illegal. The persistence with which people are insisting that an entire mediaeval system of justice is being imported wholesale into British society is just bizarre. It is not. You seem to have the impression that we’ll have public stonings within a fortnight. This is such a cartoonish and ill-informed view of what is actually happening as to beggar belief.
How would you even propose vetting arbitration services for suspicious levels of Muslimness? Is it sufficient that an arbitrator merely be a Muslim to disqualify him from working in civil disputes? How do we know how Islamicly someone will rule? Or do we get rid of private arbitration altogether, in order not to have it infiltrated by people with undesirable attitudes?
And what about Muslim marriages? We seem to have convinced ourselves that Muslims are not to be trusted with women, and Muslim women are not to be trusted with their own choices. We’ve advocated state paternalism extending well into the civil arena. It seems only reasonable, then, that we prevent Muslims from marrying. This is a serious civil contract, after all, and we can’t let this mediaeval types go marrying each other willy-nilly given their obvious prejudices. It’s probably best we start writing their wills for them, too; no use fretting about posthumous arbitration when there are probably thousands of pre-written wills out there just dripping with inequality. Those Sharia banks had better go, too. No real reason to believe they’re harmful at all (quite the opposite, in fact), but Sharia is mediaeval, and that’s that.
Crazy! That’s where Ethelred the Unready sat, isolated in his metal box, and independently invented algebra and astronomy and the trebuchet and celery and trilbys and scimitars and ham. That’s our culture, that is.
Oh and hummus. I forgot about that. Nothing that tasty could be Arabic.
Which would be why I mentioned his list and not his citations. As already noted, the reference to mathematics does not even belittle the Islamic contribution in the way that he pretended. Similarly, his citation to the Wikipedia article on Avicenna actually strongly reinforces my point that he (along with many other Persian and Arab scholars in Islamic society) made many contributions to European society. Aquila Be’s list, however, deprecating every contribution from Islamic society (even when his own evidence contradicts him) is very much in keeping with the sort of nonsense that one discovers on anti-Muslim sites.
You, of course, also misreperesent my position on Wikipedia, as well. I do find it valuable as a location from which one can discover general information of untested quality (in contrast to the earlier claim that it was all “shite”), providing, as it does, citations to primary sources. I would not consider it a valuable primary source that is of independently high quality, even though that is what you wished to imply about my position.
Well, actually, it is. Just because an arbitrated settlement does not break any British law, does not mean it is fair or non-medieval. The systematic suppression of women as second class citizens throughout sharia law, even when it does not break any specific British laws, is contrary to the humanist spirit that has generally guided the development of British law over the last couple of hundred years. (Granted, it’s been a gradual move toward humanism, but a move nonetheless.)
Yes, people can say some very foolish things when you put words in their mouths. Strawmen are like that.
My problem isn’t with Muslimness, it’s with deep, dyed in the wool sexism that is inherent in Sharia law. Is that really so hard to understand?
If I were sure they were really their own choices, then I’d be OK with sharia law via arbitration. But I’m very suspicious of the freedom of their choices, given all the pressure and sanctions that can be brought against them by their family and their community if they are seen to be making a choice that isn’t sufficiently Islamic, as a rejection of arbitration under sharia law might be seen to be. Is THAT so hard to understand?
Another beautifully constructed strawman. If only someone would actually say those things, your argument would be won!
We don’t. We should blanket not allow religious beliefs to infect any procedures. Particularly those beliefs that are at systemic odds with humanist secular values.
Those of us not addicted to building strawmen as a hobby recognise the subtle yet crucial difference between not allowing the in ‘courts’ convened under an illiberal ideology that treats one gender as unequal socially and legally and not allowing those rights at all.
I’ve got to ask what the need for a separate arbitration system is, too. Suppose two parties wish to enter into a contract and they wish that each party is bound by Islamic law. Why can’t this be written into the contract itself, and any dispute settled in the current civil court system, with the aid of expert witnesses? There’s then also civil oversight able to strike down a contract as invalid, should anyone be forced into signing it (which, IMO, is slightly more reassuring than any Sharia based court’s ability to act impartially).