Odd thing, the Jewish group Revolt wasn’t even formed until 2013, but that didn’t stop them from immediately embarking on a campaign of murder and violence, guided by an ideology calling for the expulsion or death of all non-Jews in Israel. They’ve already been mentioned in this thread, and they’re not the only murderous Jewish group around, or that have been around during recent decades. Would you care to comment on them?
My definition of terrorism is not limited to prosecutable actions. That’s why I haven’t suggested that all the people involved in SPLC’s hate groups ought to be arrested. But sure - “violence intended to influence an audience.” Let’s go with that.
All of those behaviors, in some circumstances, are indeed violence against the person on whom they are performed. Some of them, in some circumstance, are even prosecutable.
Not all circumstances, obviously. I don’t argue for a blanket law prohibiting all boob touching. What I want is for people to see that grabbing a woman’s boob in order to frighten her is “violence intended to influence an audience.” So talking about how you’d kill any transexual if you caught him in your restroom, or refusing to hire black people, because they’re so lazy.
And sometimes, of course, the audience to be influenced is the perpetrator’s peers and sometimes it’s the object of derision. Racist jokes, for example, also serve to bind together a peer group in addition to intimidating an outsider.
Actually, just so we’re clear - I’m not terribly interested in intimidating or isolating right-wing extremists, no more than I am trying to change their minds. I don’t care about saving their souls. I just want to shine a spotlight on them so everyone else can see that their behavior isn’t harmless, even when it’s wrapped in flag and carrying a cross.
And, as usual, the whole “you’re a bigot for not being tolerant of my bigotry!” is kindergarten bullshit.
But - to your accusation that I am engaging in terroristic behavior.
Pointing out uncomfortable facts is not terrorism, because reality is what it is. The fact is right-wing extremists are responsible for a lot of violent terrorism in this country. Hence, for example, my quoting of the Vox article which found that right-wing terrorism perpetrates almost twice as much violent terrorism as foreign muslims do.
Repeating a factual statement - even to influence an audience - is not terrorism. Drawing conclusion from factual statements and acting on factual statements are also not terrorism.
OTOH, repeating hateful rumors, lies, stereotypes and jokes - can in some circumstances be terroristic, when the subject knows that the rumors etc. are not true and intends to cause harm with them. Sometimes, of course, it’s just pig ignorance. But repeating, for example, that gay people can’t be trusted in the military is to repeat a non-factual false statement with the intent to harm gay people and drive them out of a group. That’s violence intended to affect an audience. Terrorism.
Huh? Of course it does, and I’m not talking about Jesus. Moses is absolutely one of the progenitors of the Christian religion, and Christian doctrine agrees with Jewish doctrine that his teachings directly represent the Divine Word (as illustrated, for example, by the many Christians even nowadays who argue that homosexuality is an abomination based on its prohibition in Leviticus, which long pre-dates Jesus). Jesus himself made it very clear (Matthew 5:17-18) that his followers were to consider the Mosaic Law as still in force “until heaven and earth pass away”.
Of course, most Christians these days follow a different interpretation of Christian scriptures in which not all of Jewish law is considered still binding for Christians. But that’s the point: the “real meaning” of the scripture doesn’t exist independent of its interpretation, and interpretations differ.
[QUOTE=Magiver]
It is those laws that Muslims look to for guidance.
[/quote]
It’s some interpretation of those laws that most Muslims look to for guidance in matters of religion. Many Muslims, both in Muslim-majority countries like Turkey and in non-Muslim-majority ones, have no problem with religious law governing personal morality and coexisting with a secular civil code for governing society as a whole, which is exactly the same way many adherents of other religions reconcile their religious codes with civil society.
[QUOTE=Magiver]
It is those laws that punish gay people up to and including death.
[/quote]
It is various particular interpretations of those laws and their application to civil society that punish gay people up to and including death. As I and others have noted, there are many Muslims who adhere to different interpretations of those laws who do not support punishing gay people.
[QUOTE=Magiver]
The Bible is not the rule of law nor will it ever be in Western countries. Sharia law IS the rule of law for Muslims.
[/QUOTE]
No, once again, many Muslims do not regard shari’a law (which itself exists in a variety of different interpretations; there’s no one single “shari’a law”) as “the rule of law” for them. That doesn’t make them “not real” Muslims, any more than adhering to an interpretation of Christianity that doesn’t require following all the codes in Leviticus makes the adherents “not real” Christians.
And, of course, the fact that “the Bible is not the rule of law” in “Western countries” is true only for comparatively recent history. (Which is fairly obvious if you just think for a moment, for example, about where the word “sodomy” for homosexual acts—as in “anti-sodomy laws”—comes from.*)
Medieval Christian societies enacted religious laws against homosexual acts and other Biblically-prohibited behavior as part of their theocratic structure, and those religious prohibitions were retained in what became early modern civil law codes. Fourteenth-century English criminal law, for example, decreed that “sorcerers, sorceresses, renegades, sodomists and heretics publicly convicted” had to be be burned alive.
Christian religious prejudice against homosexual acts was used to justify their legal prohibition well into the modern era, as instanced in the writings of the great English jurist Coke: “Buggery is a detestable, and abominable sin, amongst Christians not to be named. […] [It is] committed by carnal knowledge against the ordinance of the Creator and order of nature […]” Which, of course, is the ultimate foundation of the notorious Section 377 of the British Indian Penal Code, which was copied (often with the same section number) into the penal codes for other British colonies and retained in their post-colonial legal systems:
So, ironically, it’s the fact that the Bible was formerly “the rule of law in Western countries” that ultimately resulted in the legal prohibition of homosexuality in many non-western cultures (including some Muslim ones) that previously hadn’t regarded homosexual acts as a crime.
So much for your clumsy and naive attempts at a simplistic essentialist distinction between the “intrinsic nature” of religious law in Islam and in other religions. :dubious:
The issue isn’t the Koran vs. the Bible, it’s theocratic governments vs. democratic governments. The West has democratic governments, the Islamic world has mostly theocratic governments. Even in the nations that are not technically under sharia law, the population is appeased by the low hanging fruit, like killing people for being gay.
That’s our point (although see slash2k’s most recent post pointing out some notable exceptions). The point is that, logically speaking, you can’t have it both ways.
You can’t argue that modern Muslims are bound by the intrinsic nature of their religion to kill homosexuals because their ancient scripture tells them to, and then just take it for granted that (most) modern Jews are not bound by the intrinsic nature of their religion to kill homosexuals even though their ancient scripture also tells them to.
[QUOTE=Magiver]
You can’t have a prophet who murdered people and not expect his followers to emulate him. […] You’re logic is flawed if you suggest a group of people HAVE to emulate their prophet.
[/QUOTE]
:rolleyes: Could you at least attempt to make up your mind, to use a generous designation for whatever it is that’s producing your arguments?
If it’s “expected” that modern religious adherents will “emulate” the policy on executing homosexuals and other “deviants” laid down by their ancient prophet and scripture, then why do (most) modern Jews and Christians not kill homosexuals even though their ancient prophet and scripture say they should?
If, on the other hand, modern religious adherents don’t “have to emulate” the policy on executing homosexuals and other “deviants” laid down by their ancient prophet and scripture, then why are you claiming that the only reason (some) modern Muslims kill homosexuals is that their ancient prophet and scripture say they should?
If we could step away from the “Christianity did/does it too” point (which I fully accept and condemn equally), and the historical roots of anti-homosexuality legislation (likewise), and think about the particular problems with anti-LGBT doctrine and attitudes in the Muslim world, and where we go from here:
With Islam in the modern world, there seems to be a particular difficulty in letting go of the doctrine that the Koran is the perfect word of God. And it’s disingenuous to claim that, if you take the words at face value, the barbaric attidtude toward homosexuality in the Koran (and much worse in the Hadith and Sira) is a question of “interpretation”.
It seems to me that the many Muslims who do have civilized attitudes toward LGBT people are doing this by simply ignoring the barbaric parts of the Koran & Hadith in practice, while still ostensibly claiming to adhere to the doctrine that the Koran is the perfect word of God (again, I fully realize that this is precisely what Christians did historically and still do). The problem with this is that it validates the idea that the extremists who take everything literally are better Muslims - and there are a frightening number of Muslims doing just this.
Given the huge number of Muslims who evidently still do take the Koran & Hadith literally with regard to homosexuality (perhaps not those in the U.S., but those in Muslim-majority countires, evidenced by the Pew poll data, and a shocking number in the U.K.), it seems to me that there’s an urgent need for some more moderate and morally acceptable form of Islamic ideology that explicitly rejects the doctrine that the Koran is the perfect, sacred and infallible word of God. Is there such a thing? Absent this, it seems to me that moderate Muslims are going to have an incredibly difficult time combating the idea that the extremists are actually better Muslims.
How are barbaric attitudes toward homosexuality in the Qur’an any less a “question of interpretation” than barbaric attitudes toward homosexuality in the Bible?
All three ancient Abrahamic faiths, as we’ve established, originally and historically embody severe homophobic prejudices. What we want to know is:
Why and how do some modern adherents of all of those faiths embrace ethical and legal systems that reject those prejudices, while others do not? And,
Why is the proportion of the latter group of adherents to the former group so much greater in modern Islam than in modern Judaism and Christianity?
[QUOTE=Riemann]
It seems to me that the many Muslims who do have civilized attitudes toward LGBT people are doing this by simply ignoring the barbaric parts of the Koran & Hadith in practice, while still ostensibly claiming to adhere to the doctrine that the Koran is the perfect word of God (again, I fully realize that this is precisely what Christians did historically and still do). The problem with this is that it validates the idea that the extremists who take everything literally are better Muslims - and there are a frightening number of Muslims doing just this.
[/quote]
Yup, scriptural literalists always have the rhetorical edge of being able to claim that their interpretation is more “faithful to the original” than those of their competitors. (Although of course, much of that advantage is based on the fact that the interpretive assumptions of the literalists are just better disguised in the commonalities of their modern culture. For example, homophobic Christians claim that they’re just following an obvious undeniable literal reading of the Biblical prohibition of “a man lying with another man” as an abomination. But that’s partly because they’re assuming that everybody has the same “obvious undeniable” definition of what “a man” is—which, for example, Hindus who define male homosexuality as involving a “third sex” would disagree with.)
[QUOTE=Riemann]
[…] it seems to me that there’s an urgent need for some more moderate and morally acceptable form of Islamic ideology that explicitly rejects the doctrine that the Koran is the perfect, sacred and infallible word of God.
[/quote]
Why do you think that the focus needs to be on challenging the Qur’an’s sacred status as the word of God, rather than on supporting different interpretations of the Qur’anic teachings and their role in civil society?
[QUOTE=Riemann]
Is there such a thing?
[/quote]
Hoo boy, you are getting into the question of specific forms of Islamic historicism in traditions of Qur’an scholarship, which is way above my pay grade, and I wish Tamerlane were here to give you a better answer. But I can say in general that yes, there are some Islamic viewpoints that do not consider the Qur’an in its present form to be the perfectly transmitted infallible word of God, including some Shi’a scholars. There is also modern historicist Qur’an scholarship, some of whose exponents are Muslims, which like modern historicist Biblical scholarship proceeds from the assumption that the scripture is ultimately a human construction and needs to be understood in historical context.
[QUOTE=Riemann]
Absent this, it seems to me that moderate Muslims are going to have an incredibly difficult time combating the idea that the extremists are actually better Muslims.
[/QUOTE]
:dubious: Moderate Muslims seem to do just fine at rejecting the idea that violent extremists are better Muslims than they are, and they use scriptural support for that position too.
If what you mean is that moderate Muslims have a difficult time competing with violent extremists in spreading their own version of Islam in certain volatile regions, there are lots of reasons for that, few of which ISTM really have a lot to do with scriptural literalism.
Can we try to have a discussion without your first response always being “Christianity does it too” - I did explictly state that I agree with that premise. The Bible doesn’t excuse the Islamic texts, it just makes them equally horrible.
Exactly, that’s what I was getting at. But this is not a game of trying to prove which religion is worse. They are all fucking awful when taken literally. The important question is the practical matter of how we move forward into greater moderation, thinking at this point about the solutions that are needed in the Islamic world in particular. We all know the horrific level of anti-LGBT bigotry among US fundie Christians too, but I think the solution there is probably not the same.
I’m hardly an Islamic scholar, so I’m not quite sure of the relative degree of reverence in which the Qur’an and the Hadith are held, but my understanding is that the anti-homosexuality in the Qur’an is roughly similar to the Bible and maybe can be fudged away, whereas the Hadith says:
How can you possibly “interpret” that away? You must simply reject it as wrong.
Are you serioulsy claiming that extreme persection and even murder (legalized or otherwise) of gays has not a lot to do with scriptural literalism, given the Hadith quotes above, and given the explicit claims of the perpetrators that they are doing this in the name of Islam? Now, I grant of course that scripture (Islamic or otherwise) is not the only possible root cause - viz Russia, of course. But it’s clear that scriptural literalism is being used at the very least to justify throwing gays off buildings, there’s a cycle of reinforcement here. So whether or not it was the historical root cause, scritptural literalism must be convincingly opposed if moderation is ever to win out.
But I wasn’t playing any “Christianity does it too” card: I was asking for a clarification of why you seem to be claiming that such horrible doctrines in Islam are not “a question of interpretation”.
Because of course they are. The way that any religion moves past any of its earlier doctrines is to re-interpret them.
If what you’re trying to do is draw a distinction between “reinterpreting” earlier doctrines and “ignoring” them, I don’t really buy it, because any practice of ignoring any part of a religious scripture is ultimately part of a larger process of reinterpreting the whole.
:dubious: The Leviticus prohibition of homosexuality (at least for males) is at least as explicit as the Hadith texts you quote: it’s an abomination and the perpetrators must be killed, full stop. Don’t see how that can really be “fudged away” in your (somewhat confusing) sense of the term.
What it can be, though, is reinterpreted as part of a larger process of scriptural reinterpretation. For instance, many modern Christians appeal to other teachings in the New Testament to override the Matthew 5:17-18 declaration of Jesus that all the Mosaic law is still valid for his followers, and hence they don’t have to abide by the Leviticus codes.
Similarly, modern liberal Muslims such as Muslims for Progressive Values appeal to Qur’anic and hadith teachings about equality, love and compassion for all to override specific condemnations and prohibitions:
Sure, but what I said is that the spreading and adoption of violent-fundamentalist literalist interpretations of Islam probably has not a lot to do with scriptural literalism.
Once people have already bought in to a radical-extremist theocratic reading of Islam, they use scriptural literalism to justify it, yes. But the scriptural literalism isn’t what sells them on that reading in the first place. People who subscribe to moderate interpretations of Islam aren’t doing so merely because they’ve never happened to notice that their scriptures could be interpreted more literally to support more draconian positions.
And that, IMO, is the really important question: What are the reasons that many Muslims, especially politically radicalized ones, are buying into radical-fundamentalist extremist interpretations of Islam? We’ve already seen that “Because that’s what their holy book says” is an unconvincing answer.
Every crank and oppressor is going to point to a source common to other people with the intent of luring them to join the oppression. Your insistence that that source is the cause of the oppression is neither historically accurate nor logical. I realize that it makes you happy, but that is not the same thing.
So fascism itself isn’t bad, it’s just people who justify their abuses in the name of fascism.
I get what you mean, Islam is a religion that doesn’t necessarily have to be homophobic. Except that it is, and violently so. There are some liberal Muslims who don’t see things this way, but at least on this issue, they are the tiny minority, whereas the haters are the vast majority. And within the Islamic world, a gay person can’t be out lest they die. And I don’t mean Matthew Sheppard dead, where someone might take exception to their gayness and kill them, I mean like “Tutsis in Rwanda” dead. You poke your head out of the closet, you get it cut off.
Ok, I agree that it’s important to think through both proximate and ultimate causes, of course. But where does that take us with anti-LGBT attitudes in the Muslim world? Let’s accept that anti-homosexual laws in the Muslim world do have their roots in Christian imperialism, that’s the ultimate historical cause, or at least a major factor. But so what? You can’t possibly argue that the dominance of the West is still today a cause for the maintenance of anti-LGBT attitudes in the Muslim world, where virtually all of the victims are Muslims themselves.
These attitudes have become entrenched, they are now justified and culturally transmitted in the Muslim world by reference to Islamic doctrine, not Christian doctrine. So, absent time travel, how else can moderate Muslims fight anti-LGBT attitudes today except by directly disputing literalist forms of Islamic doctrine? Islamic ideology is, by definition, the primary mechanism of cultural transmission in the Islamic world. What other mysterious force is now out there that’s causing Muslims to persecute and kill LGBT fellow-Muslims?
And that’s where the discussion ends, as far as I am concerned. The question was asked: Does Islam drive homophobic violence? I don’t know how to define “drive”, but if you’re asking if it influences that violence, then yes it does. You just said so your self, so stop arguing with me and insinuating that anyone who holds this viewpoint is a bigot or being dishonest. Not everyone is framing this discussion the way you are – we don’t have to either. I never disagreed that Islam shares a lot in common with Christianity and Judaism.
I’m not interested in comparing Islam to other religions. That is not the issue, despite your stubborn insistence that it is. It seems as though you are trying to discuss Islam, relative to Christianity and Judaism. I am not interested in that discussion because, like you, I agree that all of the Abrahamic faiths, to some degree, encourage adherence to ideas which inevitably lead to intolerance and aggression. The fact that some percentage of the population or even a minority has less literal and less aggressive interpretations of their holy texts doesn’t really matter. The point is, when you acculturate people to believe that there is some Divine being that judges you and everyone for certain beliefs and behaviors, some people are going to “misinterpret” that message.
I hate to paraphrase Mao Zedong but he was right about one thing: religion is poison.
No, a political doctrine such as fascism is not capable of being reinterpreted to conform to a wide variety of different political doctrines. But religious doctrines are, as we see, for instance from the huge variation in interpretations of Islamic religious doctrines from Saudi theocracy to Muslims for Progressive Values.
[QUOTE=adaher]
I get what you mean, Islam is a religion that doesn’t necessarily have to be homophobic.
[/quote]
Exactly.
[QUOTE=adaher]
Except that it is, and violently so.
[/quote]
Except where it isn’t, of course.
[QUOTE=adaher]
There are some liberal Muslims who don’t see things this way, but at least on this issue, they are the tiny minority, whereas the haters are the vast majority.
[/quote]
It depends on which Muslim society you’re talking about. As has been pointed out ad nauseam in this thread alone, Muslims in the US are actually significantly less homophobic than members of some other religious groups. And there are some Muslim-majority countries where homosexuality is not criminalized, including (most of) Indonesia, Turkey, and Albania, which alone make up more than 15% of the entire global Muslim population.
[QUOTE=adaher]
And within the Islamic world, a gay person can’t be out lest they die.
[/quote]
Except where they can. I mean, have you seriously never even heard of the existence of actual Muslim gay rights activists in Muslim-majority countries, such as Ömer Akpınar in Turkey or Hamed Sinno of the band Mashrou’ Leila in Lebanon?
Christianity and other religions are also hostile to gays. So what? That doesn’t change the fact that Islam itself is also hostile to those who are gay.
In the West Islam does not tend to be violently homophobic, no. In the Islamic world, it’s a very different story.
I’m open to an argument that the problem isn’t Islam, but Islam combined with theocratic tyranny.
I thought that you had already conceded the rather obvious point that anti-LGBT attitudes are a huge problem in the Islamic world, and even among Muslims in the U.K.? Do we really need to keep linking to the frightening Pew research data? Are you now backtracking that it’s not so bad after all, or that it doesn’t matter because Christians do it too?
Why on earth would you want to end the discussion there, just at the most crucial point?
We’ve established that three closely related monotheistic faiths originally incorporated very similar forms of homophobic prejudice, and interpreted religious doctrine concerning that prejudice in different ways in different periods and cultures up to the start of the modern period.
Why are you not interested in trying to understand the reasons why, beginning only in recent times, the vast majority of Jews and Christians now live in societies that don’t legally endorse or impose homophobic violence, while most Muslims now live in societies that do?
[QUOTE=asahi]
I never disagreed that Islam shares a lot in common with Christianity and Judaism.
I’m not interested in comparing Islam to other religions.
[/quote]
:dubious: How do you expect to understand anything meaningful about why modern Islam is the way it is, if you refuse to look at it in the context of its own history and the inextricably entangled history of its fellow Abrahamic faiths that are so closely related to it?
[QUOTE=asahi]
The fact that some percentage of the population or even a minority has less literal and less aggressive interpretations of their holy texts doesn’t really matter.
[/quote]
Really? I would think that if we’re trying to understand how different interpretations of holy texts spread and become prevalent, that fact should matter quite a lot.
[QUOTE=asahi]
The point is, when you acculturate people to believe that there is some Divine being that judges you and everyone for certain beliefs and behaviors, some people are going to “misinterpret” that message.
I hate to paraphrase Mao Zedong but he was right about one thing: religion is poison.
[/QUOTE]
Your erudite and profoundly insightful contribution to this discussion of the various complex factors producing uniquely high levels of fundamentalist theocratic violence and repression in some branches of modern Islam has been noted and gratefully acknowledged.
I have always readily asserted that point, rather than unwillingly “conceding” it, as you seem to be insinuating. Could you explain why you now seem to think my position on that point is less clear?