I wouldn’t consider Tunisia part of the Middle East. It’s in the Arab and Muslim worlds, yes, but geographically it’s still just North Africa.
Just for the record, although Israel is a self-declared Jewish state that does not even pretend that it separates Church and State, Israeli Jews are 37% agnostic or atheist. Many Jews in Israel become atheists every year. Have you ever heard of an Israeli Jew being executed or imprisoned because he rejected Judaism as a religion?
Israel does not have civil marriage (although there is a strong movement in favour of it) but its courts have ruled that gay marriages performed in other countries must be recognized inside Israel. Israel is a Mecca (pun intended) for Palestinian gays who take refuge in Israel from Muslim and Arab homophobia.
Comparing Israel to the fascist theocracies that exist and that are increasing in the Muslim world is frankly ridiculous.
Reality-based thinking anyone?
:rolleyes: Oh goody, it’s everybody’s favorite hit band Valteron and the Moving Goalposts again.
Let’s review the bidding:
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Valteron (post #67) complains that the new Egyptian President Morsi “seems to have no idea what is meant by separation of Church and State”.
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Ibn Warraq (post #71) quite rightly points out that “separation of Church and State” per se is not the problem here, because many liberal western democracies also don’t maintain a strict legal separation between government and religious institutions, and it doesn’t prevent their citizens from enjoying the full exercise of religious liberties and mutual religious toleration with members of other faiths.
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Valteron apologizes for his misstatement, thanks Ibn Warraq for the clarification, and explains that what he really meant was that Morsi seems dangerously inclined not just to disregard strict Church/State separation but actively to promote a hardline radical-Islamist theocracy. The thread participants then go on to have a lively and well-informed debate about how to weight the different political factors affecting Morsi’s government and what the odds are of various potential changes in Egypt’s domestic and international policy.
Ha ha ha ha haaaa!! You spotted that one was fake, right? Sorry, couldn’t resist. Anyway, of course what really happened next was this:
- Valteron (posts #73, 76, 90, 100, 102, and whatever he’s said in the meantime before I get around to submitting this) goes off in a frothy fit about how radical Islamist theocracies are much worse than moderate western democracies, without ever admitting that he shouldn’t have originally mischaracterized the problem as merely the absence of formal separation of Church and State.
Yeah, but it’s as much “Middle East” as Egypt is. Which is why many people, myself included, prefer the designation MENA (Middle East and North Africa) as a more accurate regional delimiter.
Yes, but it’s still generally considered to be part of the Middle East(or Near East for our British posters).
Here’s the difference between you and me: I see these terrible human rights abuses and I condemn them. I believe a person’s inherent right to freedom of conscience allows them to think that apostasy is a terrible crime, or that life begins at conception, or that the Flying Spaghetti Monster demands that mankind eat pasta on Fridays. I don’t care. What I do care about is people forcing their beliefs on others so as to carry out criminal punishments for changing religions, performing abortions, or eating a hamburger on the wrong day.
You look at these instances and post screeds about how evil Muslims are and how anyone who doesn’t agree with you is an apologist who tacitly endorses gross human rights violations.
See the difference?
You are twisting, misrepresenting, complicating and reinterpreting everything to the point of absurdity and incoherency. I am not going to try to untangle the ridiculous pile of verbiage you have just served up.
Let’s bring it back to the basic debate. Bringing you back to reality is not “moving the goalposts.”
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I said that Muslim states fail to separate church and state.
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Ibn Warraq said that my own country Canada as well as many other western states fail to do so, which presumably means I have no moral right to criticise Muslim states.
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I admitted that while it is true that no state appears to practise the principle with absolute perfection (the US has “In God we Trust” on their money, the Province of Ontario, Canada has publicly funded RC schools, etc.) there is NO COMPARISON between the way Muslim states impose Islam and punish apostates, and the imperfections of western states who have crosses on their flags, who have their Queen as head of the Anglican Church, etc. BTW, two Canadian provinces, Newfoundland and Quebec, abolished their faith-based schools in favour of a secular system in the last decade. So obviously, Canada is moving towards greater C/S separation.
If you think that the cases of persecution of non-Muslims and apostates that I have just cited are morally equivalent to the minor examples of church and state mixture you can identify in western democracies, you have absolutely no sense of proportion.
Your idea of “the basic debate” seems to be “If you dare to correct even my grossest falsehoods and overgeneralizations about anything involving Muslims, then you are an Islamist apologist who thinks that minor civil liberties infractions in western democracies are morally equivalent to oppressive persecution in radical Islamist theocracies.”
Operating under this premise, since you are doubtless going to go on posting gross falsehoods and overgeneralizations about Muslims and brave but doomed ignorance fighters are doubtless going to go on correcting them, you should have no trouble winning the debate to your own satisfaction.
Allow me to extend my congratulations in advance.
The points you aqre presenting above have descended to the point of pointless, puerile invective. No point in addressing them.