I bring you Post #152, by our esteemed guest, Dick:
"Fuck the towel-heads
I say bomb the hell out of them and let them sort out their own mess. We need toi find an alternative fuel source and say fuck the arabs and their oil. They are nothing but animals anyway. Any of them that truly want to live in a free society can immigrate here as far as that goes. Fuck nation building. We should blow them to shit and take their oil.
The OP truly rocks."
Oh. My search didn’t include the hyphen. Glad I qualified that statement.
grienspace: Can you point to me any Islamic sources decrying the practice?
I don’t understand why you anti-Muslim bigots can’t do some of your own googling once in a while. I suppose you’re afraid to find some facts that might contradict your prejudices. In any case, here’s an example of what you asked for from one Dr Imad-ad-Dean Ahmad:
Well thats good. But how about hearing from an Imam. After all, there’s an organization of gay muslims as well with a website.
And yet we have people in this thread making sweeping generalizations about Islam based on a practiced undertaken by a minority of the religion’s adherents. If the practice is such a minority one, why tar all Muslims with its brush, as some have been doing here?
Why is it not enough for you that these people don’t practice FGM? Why should they have to spend their whole lives apologizing for the barbarities of some of their co-religionists? I don’t expect Christians to spend all their time decrying the words and actions of Fred Phelps or Jimmy Swaggart. I don’t expect Canadians to continually apologize for Celine Dion and Bryan Adams.
Also, on preview, what Kimstu said. If you’re so concerned to show how much support there is in the Muslim world for FGM, why can’t you make a good-faith effort to do some searching of your own.
Also, this might not have occurred to you, but there are millions and millions of Muslims throughout the world who don’t have access to a computer or the internet. In the absence of the voices of the majority of the world’s Muslims, i’m afraid that all i can do is judge their actions. And, as my previous post demonstrated, for a large majority of them, these actions do not include female genital mutilation.
Yeah, and if Kimstu posted a cite from an Imam, your next argument would probably be, “But that’s only one Imam, and not a very big one at that.”
For Kimstu and mhendo
Here’s an example of how Christian leadership in Kenya is fighting this FGM problem.
Got anything comparable from the Islamic side to show me ?
You really don’t quite understand, do you?
Neither Kimstu nor i was asking you to find evidence of Christian groups opposed to FGM. We were saying that, instead of asking us to find citations of Muslims who oppose it, that you go and try to find some such cites yourself.
I’ve already made clear, and you continue to ignore, that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. And i continue to insist that we should be judge Muslims on their actions, and not expect them to spend their time decrying the barbaric practices of some of their co-religionists.
But you, no doubt, will continue to wallow in your hatred, despite having been shown that FGM is not a specifically Muslim practice, nor one practiced by even a majority of that faith.
What is comparable? Is this?
*On July 31, 1997, the village of Malicounda Bambara (population 3000) decided to abandon the practice. Many women of the village, inspired by their skills training classes from Tostan, took the initiative to inform other women, men and children of the village about the harmful health effects of the practice and the need to abolish it. The decision followed a period of seven to eight months during which no case of FGM/FGC was reported in the village.
The Imam of the mosque endorsed the villagers’ decision, noting that the practice had originally sought to protect a girl’s virginity until marriage. According to the Imam, the context has changed because even though excised, many girls lose their virginity before marriage and the practice scars girls and exposes them to health risks including tetanus and AIDS.
The women from Malicounda traveled to Ngerin Bambara and Ker Simbara to tell the women in those villages who had taken the same Tostan course, about their decision to abandon the practice. The village of Ngerin Bambara publicly declared the abandonment of this practice on November 6, 1997.
Two Bambara men, one an Imam from Ker Simbara, then walked from village to village convincing members of their extended families to stop this practice. Their efforts led to the Diabougou Declaration in which 50 representatives of 8,000 villagers from 13 communities in the regions of Thies and Fatick publicly decided in a joint declaration to abandon the practice. They declared their commitment to end this practice and spread this knowledge and decision to communities still engaged in the practice. One Imam said that Islam in no way obligates women to undergo any of these procedures.
Tostan’s work has expanded over the years and as of November 2000, a total of 174 villages throughout Senegal had publicly abandoned the practice.*
http://www.state.gov/g/wi/rls/rep/crfgm/10107.htm
Dig around and you can find other examples of Imam’s condemning or distancing themselves from the procedure, like Egypt’s Grand Imam Tantawi who ( in concert with the Coptic Christian Pope Shenouda III ) declared that there was nothing Islamic about FGM.
Here, a reference for Tantawi:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/42914.stm
And to counter that rabid fellow in the Netherlands, an Imam in Sweden 
:
http://www.geocities.com/WestHollywood/Park/6443/Circumcision/swedish.html
That rabid fellow is actually a mutilated woman.
However I have softened my position on Islam with respect to FGM in light of the evidence just presented to me. It is my hope that the forces of light will prevail over the forces of darkness with respect to this issue.
I’m still very concerned with the status of women in Islam in particular, because Islam is such a major force in the world today and thus a major impediment towards a future world where all women can be regarded as equal to men.
As regards the issue of muslims publicly condemning the actions of some of their more extreme co-religionists I would just mention the current top story on the BBC news website:
Muslim council team heads to Iraq
Whether they will be successful or not, who knows? But at least they are making the effort which is appreciated. Personally, I have a funny feeling that this guy will be released - it’s a bit odd that they haven’t killed him already considering they killed the other two in two days.
mhendo said:
See I have a problem with the bolded part. I agree with the bit about not condemning all muslims and so on but I think you can form judgements on islam as a whole, based simply on what it says. I don’t judge islam on what muslims do, I judge islam on what it says (same as all other ideologies).
I think people are talking at cross purposes in this thread. Some people condemn all muslims when what they should really be doing is focusing on the ideology itself.
Other people are defending islam on the grounds that not all muslims perform ______ (insert X horrendous act here). But what these people should be doing is defending individual muslims but not trying to defend islam on the basis of this.
Individual muslims are one thing, the ideology of islam is quite another. What individual muslims do or don’t do has got very little to do with the overarching ideology to which they subscribe.
Don’t know how well I’ve explained myself here - it was all very clear in my head when I started typing, oh well.
What all this fails to appreciate is that there is no agreement among all Muslims over exactly what constitutes the tenets and practices of Islam. As the example of female genital mutilation shows, some Muslims believe that this practice is condoned by Islam, while other Muslims believe that the practice contradicts the principles and teachings of Islam. Same with things like the murder of hostages.
There is not, among the world’s Muslims, any single, monolithic notion of what Islam is. There are multiple interpretations of what it means to be a good Muslim, just as there are multiple interpretations of what it means to be a good Christian.
mhendo said:
This isn’t exactly true. There are different interpretations of islam, as you say, but that doesn’t mean that it’s impossible to make judgements on islam as a whole. There are certain things that the whole of islam is on agreement upon, certain things that define islam as an ideology.
That Mohammed is a prophet, for example. Or the five pillars.
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels had slightly different takes on communism and other famous historical communists (eg Trotsky) had different takes even than them, but that doesn’t mean that one is unable to form a judgement about communism as a whole.
There are certain ideas that hold communism together, that all communists believe whatever brand they are.
Likewise with islam. In islam there are many concepts that are agreed by the whole ummah. The idea of having an ummah in the first place, for example. The ummah consists of all the world’s muslims - they are all brothers and sisters. I would argue that this creation of a “brotherhood” merely creates an “us v them” situation. You’re either in the club or you’re not.
The idea that apostacy is bad and needs to be punished is another example of something that is held to be true across all interpretations of islam.
The idea that Jesus wasn’t crucified is another example - you can’t be a muslim and believe that Jesus was crucified.
The idea that it would be desirable if the state were run according to sharia law as opposed to secular law.
All these are examples and when you start to look at it, there are hundreds of things that are held to be true by all interpretations of islam. So therefore it is perfectly possible to make judgements on islam as an ideology just as it is possible to make judgements on communism as an ideology, or christianity, or whatever.
The fact that an ideology has different interpretations within it does not negate criticism of that ideology as a whole.
Sure there are things characterize all of Islam, but the fact remains that the things that Muslims do disagree about are the very things that are the subject of this thread—practices such as beheading civilian prisoners or practicing female genital mutilation. And is it those things about which we should not generalize when it comes to Islam.
No-one in this thread is accusing Islam of being bad because Muslims believe that Mohammed is a prophet, or because of the five pillars, or because of the belief that Jesus wasn’t crucuified. People are condemning Islam for practices like beheadings and female genital mutilation, and it is indisputable that not all Muslilms agree on these things.
So mhendo, are you comfortable in saying that the institutional subjugation of women is not a black mark on Islam ? Cause you seem to want to ignore that.
When did i ignore it?
I have, in this thread, been responding to specific allegations about female genital mutilation and terrorist beheadings of captive civilians.
To the extent that Islam does practice the institutional subjugation of women, i condemn the practice. But your blithe assumption that this occurs to the same extent for all Muslims, and thus is the same for all Islam, is just another example of the gross and intellectually dishonest generalizations that have characterized many of the arguments in this debate.
Some people seem unwilling or unable to accept that Islam is a religion of many faces, of vastly different practices, and of multifarious attitudes to many social, political and theological issues. It is not a monolith.
And your blithe accusation that I assume that the extent of this institutional subjugation of women is equal across the board for Islam is dishonest.
The extent of FGM that you would agree to that exists within Islam is possible because of the general view that women must remain submissive to men. Clearly there is a range of severity in the practice of FGM just as there is a range in the severity of the secondary role that women play in Islamic societies.
You’re right, in ‘forward-thinking’ Christian societies we let then keep their clits and simply make do by beating them up.
Ain’t painting with broad-brushes grand?
mhendo said:
No it’s not indisputable. Female genital mutilation is, as you say, a cultural thing but beheading comes directly from islam - I gave the appropriate quranic quotes earlier.
Most muslims do not think Iraq is a jihad so they would condemn the Iraqi killings but those muslims who are carrying out the beheadings think that Iraq IS a jihad and so therefore they think that they are killing people in accordance with islamic injunctions.
When a jihad is operational then beheading is the ONLY way to kill, at least for your fashionable radical muslim.
Beheading prisoners comes from islam, it’s not a cultural thing.