Sigh.
Misspoke. Does not equate to a majority.
Well, I guess you can at least claim a certain consistency in your efforts at “logic.” I can’t say much more for it.
You pick the most extreme cases of the loudest people on the farthest “left” and then act as though anyone who happens to accept the description as a “liberal” holds all those extreme views in lockstep. You paint a large segment of the American public with the widest paint roller imaginable, claiming that they make broad brush claims about your political associates.
meh
If you can only talk about issues as though everyone on each side lined up in lockstep, you have nothing to bring to the discussion but acrimony, nothing reasonable or considered, at all.
Well, when the loudest and most extreme members of the left appear to be not only its spokesmen but drivers of change, and the rest stay silent and let it go unopposed, there’s nothing to grab onto in order to excuse the majority from agreement with the extremists.
For starters, AFAICT your wife would probably not have any problem with her dress code or her personal opinions in Albania (59% Muslim). Although if she wants to visit a church or mosque (perhaps unlikely given her personal opinions?), it would be polite for her to cover her shoulders, as indeed is the case in many US houses of worship. The Albanian government is secular, with laws permitting abortion and prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation (Albania is ranked 19th out of 49 European countries on LGBT rights).
Probably most Albanians would disagree with or disapprove of some of your wife’s liberal views, but if she lives in the US Bible Belt I’m sure she’s used to that.
I’ll do some more investigation on other Muslim-majority nations and get back to you with additional info.
Requisite disclaimer for the people who think that paying attention to specific facts on Islam-related issues automatically makes one an “Islam apologist” or “terrorist sympathizer” or whatever: Of course, nobody is attempting in any way to deny that there ought to be many more Muslim-majority nations which freely tolerate the expression of liberal views, personal autonomy in dress, etc., than there currently are.
Well, you’re free to call out “broadbrush whinging and insults” directed at you and/or your ideological allies whenever you encounter it.
But resorting to broadbrush whinging and insults on your own account, on the two-wrongs-must-be-better-than-a-right principle, is not a legitimate argument.
You’re mixing some things up, and doing what a LOT of Islam apologists here are doing, burying the lead.
I don’t believe theology is the ONLY thing that drives the beliefs and attitudes of people. Culture is a powerful variable in moderating religious influences in society, or inflaming them. But the doctrines still matter in terms of whether some cultural changes are more effective at overruling religions ideas and attitudes or not. Will it be JUST as easy separating church and state between Christians and Muslims? I don’t think so, because with Islam the religion has more to say about the actions of the state and peoples relation to it.
As for my vague speculations, here is something more concrete.
You don’t need to watch the whole thing, just listen to the part about How much of the Quran/Sira/Hadith is devoted to non muslims/kafir…
51%
Now tell me, if Over HALF of the doctrine/stories/examples of the prophet deal with interactions with non muslims, most of it in the negative, is it CRAZY to suggest that this makes Islam structurally more antagonistic towards other belief systems?
Talk of history, how about actual DATA sets like religious plurality in muslim majority countries? How are Zoroastrians doing in Iran? Christians? Jews? The middle east in general? Everything I hear is that the muslim population is much more antagonistic towards religious minorities, even in Lebanon where there is a plurality with Christians, they had a god damn civil war not too long ago. In India there are continual flareups in Kashmir. In the US issues are smaller, but so is the muslim population, if it grows large enough I expect the same sorts of phenomenon to a greater degree.
Why? Because of something very basic Kimtsu. I RESPECT muslims more than you do (now now, don’t spit out ALL your drink). Some of them actually study their faith, and when they read the doctrines in the Quran, read about the life of Muhammad, about how they are expected to react towards others, SOME of them will actually believe the sh*t they read.
I know, shocking. But people like you? all belief systems are basically equal, no one religion has ideas that are any more or less likely to be resistant to liberal democracy, or more intolerant of the “other.”
Am I caricaturing your beliefs? Do you NOT believe that different religious doctrines are essentially irrelevant when it comes to how practitioners behave? Or that with the same cultural influences, they will all basically conform in the same ways?
If so I find it absolutely insane. If you have a field in space, its effects often depend on the charge of the particles within the field. The intuition that all religions conform in similar ways before the onslaught of culture seems as ridiculous to me as the claim that all particles behave in identical ways amidst the same type of field.
I have two basic intuitions about Islam:
-Islam has more justifications for being intertwined with the state than christianity
-Islam is more antagonistic towards non muslims than other faiths (or incorrect variants of muslims, like the Amadiyah muslim that was murdered in the UK)
Whether these two intuitions of mine are correct or not is the actual lead. If those two things are correct, Islam will be INTRINSICALLY more resistant to the kinds of modernization that the christian world has undergone. Does that mean the task to reform it is impossible? Well no, but more difficult? Absolutely, maybe so difficult it would be more beneficial to sway people away from Islam altogether.
Which works exactly the same way when looking at the Right. I have never seen any “responsible” people on the Right seriously try to refute or even tone down Limbaugh, Hannity, Beck, Coulter, etc. (Heck, the one time a Republican tried to claim that Limbaugh did not speak for all Republicans, the RNC made their own chairman apologize to Limbaugh.) You simply point to the extremes you don’t like, lump everyone else on the “other side” with the extremes, and pretend that the extremes on your side are not there.
As long as you play the game you are playing, now, you remove yourself from the pool of responsible citizens.
First follow-up: AFAICT, in Bosnia (50.7% Muslim) wearing tank tops is also accepted, and abortion and same-sex relationships are also legal (although same-sex couples are legally discriminated against as far as, e.g., marriage laws are concerned, which of course is the case for many non-Muslim countries as well).
So, not surprisingly, it looks as though your wife’s clothing choices and opinions would not realistically endanger her safety in Muslim-majority countries in Europe, because Muslim-majority countries in Europe in many ways are quite similar to their neighboring non-Muslim-majority countries.
Gee, it almost seems as though mores and laws in Muslim societies are affected by culture and history and politics and a whole host of other factors, instead of being a worldwide uniform monolith of fundamentalist hive-mind programming. :dubious: Nah, impossible, right? :rolleyes:
Okay, good on Albania.
You really don’t think that it might be because 40 to 49 percent of those countries’ citizens are not Muslim?
Well, how do you reconcile that hypothesis with the abovementioned comparison with Cameroon?
I.e., both Bosnia and Albania, which are 50-60% Muslim, are much more liberal on, e.g., gay rights and abortion than Cameroon, which is only 21% Muslim.
To repeat: In majority-Christian Cameroon in sub-Saharan Africa, both Christians and Muslims are extremely intolerant of homosexuality and abortion, while in majority-Muslim Bosnia and Albania in Europe, both Christians and Muslims are much more tolerant of homosexuality and abortion.
You really have to struggle to look at that comparison and try to argue that it must be specifically the Muslims causing the high intolerance levels. :rolleyes:
On the bright side, as our own even sven has reported, there are regions in Cameroon where it would be completely acceptable for your wife to go topless. Muslim women in those regions also go topless (but wear their Muslim headscarf for modesty, natch). 
Not at all. Do you know what an “outlier” is? If you do, you are being very disingenuous. Your exact method of cherrypicking could be used to “prove” that women are just as tall as men.
IOW, the valid comparison is the median predominantly Muslim country vs. the median predominantly Christian country.
Same challenge as above: back this up. Show us what the majority of Muslims do that indicates violence, hatred, or intolerance. You’ve made the claim; can you back it up, where no one else has been able to?
:dubious: I think you must be misunderstanding me. I am certainly not claiming that there aren’t any societies where social conservatism and repression are driven by Islamist ideologies.
What I am doing is pointing out that it’s obviously unsound to argue that social repressiveness must be due to “Muslimness” in and of itself, since we see clear examples of less repressive societies that are nonetheless more Muslim than some more repressive societies.
[QUOTE=SlackerInc]
IOW, the valid comparison is the median predominantly Muslim country vs. the median predominantly Christian country.
[/QUOTE]
What would that be attempting to prove? That modern majority-Christian cultures on average worldwide are more liberal than modern majority-Muslim cultures on average worldwide?
But as I keep saying over and over (most recently in a post to Salvor), nobody is in the least disputing that claim at all. Everybody readily agrees that nowadays global Christian culture overall is more tolerant than global Muslim culture overall.
What we don’t agree on is whether we should simplistically and ignorantly attempt to attribute that difference in the current historical moment to intrinsic and fundamental ideological differences built into Christianity and Islam from the very start of their existence.
FFS, SlackerInc, and after you explicitly promised you wouldn’t move the goalposts, too. :rolleyes: I think maybe you just don’t do very well at keeping track of exactly what you’re talking about.
Hint. Get out a pocket calculator. Enter 720,000,000 and then multiply by 2. The product is less than 1.6 billion. So you’ve just failed on the face of it. You just pointed to a minority, as if it fulfills a claim made about a majority.
Can you even support this cite? Magiver was only able to point to 400,000,000. That’s not a majority. You just cited a number that would be larger (but still not a majority); now can you cite that this many people actually favor the death penalty for apostasy? Now can you point to an actual majority of 1.6 billion that favors the death penalty for apostasy? (You’re allowed to use a calculator.)
You made a specific claim: can you validate it?
So, back to our original goalpost position of analyzing SlackerInc’s wife’s travel options. Kyrgyzstan (89% Muslim) has legal abortion and legal same-sex relations, but as in Russia, same-sex couples face discrimination and so-called “propaganda” “promoting” same-sex relations is prohibited.
On the other hand, Western-style clothing is popular and locals apparently find it amusing when tourists assume they have to dress “modestly” in order not to offend them:
On to Tajikistan (99% Muslim)! Legal abortion and legal same-sex relations, though again same-sex couples aren’t legally protected from discrimination. Nix on the tank-tops, though: appropriate clothing is expected to cover the torso, legs and shoulders.
Turkey (99% Muslim): Legal abortion (although in practical terms abortion can be difficult to obtain, a situation not unknown in certain non-Muslim countries as well), and legal same-sex relations with the usual caveat about no legal protection from discrimination or equal marriage rights.
Interestingly, transgender rights are in some ways more advanced in Turkey than in the US, with a legally recognized right to change one’s gender dating back as far as 1988.
Dress codes in urban areas are typical of European cities: no bare shoulders or knees when visiting a mosque or other formal setting, but otherwise not a problem.
To give credit where it’s due, SA noticed and corrected that error in post #502.