Also, this is the Pit. If you were interested in any sort of meaningful discussion or debate, this thread wouldn’t be here. And insults are more fun and less work. Plus I really don’t give enough of a shit to actually address the topic; I just like to point out when people fail to make decent arguments.
As I pointed out on the last page, you are ignoring people who do address what you said. I hesitate to call anything you posted “points”, since you’re obviously not interested in debating. This thread is just an excuse for you to bitch about Muslims and liberals. That’s what the Pit is for, so go for it, but don’t pretend you’re looking for some kind of good faith discussion.
Stringbean, let’s start with a simple one. Do you acknowledge that honor killings are not religious in origin but cultural?
Define “normal”. At any rate, there are plenty of places where Muslim women are not required to dress in whatever stereotype you seem to believe. Yes, even in majority Muslim countries. ISTM, then, that it’s not the religion, but a cultural practice.
IIRC, there happens to be at least one mosque with that individual’s likeness. ISTM, then, that it’s not the religion, but a cultural practice.
Well, that’s a pretty sweeping statement, there, isn’t it? Besides the fact that the vast majority of Muslims aren’t going out killing their daughters (or anyone else, for that matter), let alone for “honor”, there are places where so-called honor killings are perpetrated by Christians, Hindus, etc. ISTM, then, that it’s not the religion, but a cultural practice.
This is simply and completely incorrect. Have you ever heard of the Islamic Republic of Iran? The legislature of that country has fourteen members who are not Muslims. For your edification, here’s the latest breakdown as listed in that link:
[ul][li]Armenians: 5[/li][li]Assyrian and Chaldean (Catholic): 4[/li][li]Jewish: 3[/li][li]Zorastrian: 2[/ul][/li]
So, a country that’s officially Islamic happens to mandate legislative representation for non-Muslims. Maybe you should bone up on logic. All it takes is one counter-example to disprove your assertion that “everyone must be Muslim”.
IIRC, there are plenty of people in the United States of America who are firmly convinced that the country was founded on Christianity and that its laws are based on the Bible. Then, of course, there are places where Islam does not “dictate how […] society is run”, even in countries with a majority Muslim population.
What are you on about, here? When Europe was urinating all over science and other achievements of the intellect, it fell to Muslims to preserve and advance science, math, and a few other things.
How is it the fault of all Muslims that you have formed a bad image of all Muslims?
Well, it’s patently obvious that the majority of Muslims are not blinded as you think they are. It’s also incorrect to say that it’s the religion that drives the brutality done in its name. By the way, why is the loyalty of Christians to Christianity blinding them to the brutality currently being done in Christianity’s name?
You simply do not know what you’e talking about. And, as mentioned up-thread, when that’s been pointed out to you, you ignore the facts. That’s actually not surprising, given that your OP is devoid of fact.
Algebra. The Muslim world is lucky that American middle-schoolers can’t vote.
The OP makes a lot of unsubstantiated generalizations, more tirade than argument, but to extend to Stringbean a modicum of charity, I would say that when you look at the attitudes of adherents of the world’s major religions, it’s fair to say Islam stands out.
This is Pew’s survey of attitudes on Sharia in various countries with large Muslim populations. (For some reason they exclude India.) Looking at the four countries with the highest Muslim populations, Indonesia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Egypt, which account for 38% of the world’s Muslims, Pew finds that 78% of Muslims polled support making Sharia law the law of the land. Moreover, of those who support Sharia, fully half (i.e. 40% of the 600MM+ Muslims living in those countries) support stoning as a punishment for adultery and half support death as a punishment for apostasy. At a minimum, that implies that 15% of the world’s Muslims (assuming 0% for the other 1 billion) have that particular ethos.
As someone who thinks that people should be allowed to pursue their conception of the good life without impeding others from doing the same, I have a big problem with that. And I’m not aware of there being any other major religion with a similarly large % of followers with what I would call a violently anti-liberal worldview. Ok, maybe it says more about the countries themselves (esp Pakistan and Egypt, which skew the numbers), or about Pew’s methodology, than it does about Islam. I’m open to that argument. But I think it’s possible to call out the OP for flailing his hostility to Islam like the blunt tool that it is, while granting that there’s some legitimate pit-worthiness to the idea that the anti-liberal strain in Islam is stronger than it is in other religions.
Sure.
My turn.
What is the legal precedent for these cultural practices? Is it grounded in secular law or law derived explicitly from religion?
Why seek a distinction between Muslim practice and cultural practice, when the cultures practicing these practices are almost exclusively Muslim and are doing them explicitly in the name of the Muslim religion?
Why not just call them Muslim practices?
Normal = how women freely choose to dress.
And there are plenty of places where Muslim law dictates women wear exactly what men tell them to. You turn a blind eye because some adherents aren’t cruel are heartless?
Hey! One Nazi doesn’t hate Jews! All Nazi’s are peaceful.
A cultural practice predicated explicitly on religious text.
Founded on Judeo-Christian values, one of which being secular rule of law.
No doubt, Muslims are good at preserving things from the Middle Ages. I think they are maybe too good at that?
We see what we want to see. You want to see a peaceful Muslim religion, despite culturally barbaric practices condoned by millions upon millions of Muslims explicitly in the name of the Muslim religion. So you shield your intellect by claiming religion plays no role and that these are simply cultural differences. What I see is a religion that, for whatever reason, has not been able to adapt to democratic progress. That is the fault of its adherents as much as the religion itself, but to cast aside the religious element as though it plays no part is intellectually dishonest. Everything can cast in the perspective of “cultural differences,” but where those difference derive is of critical importance.
I would like to not wear a short when it’s over 90 degrees out.
Stringbean’s last post above showed me two things:
[ol][li]Stringbean’s an utter moron.[/li][li]Stringbean’s a damn liar.[/ol][/li]
That seems to be a fair summation.
Unless that cultural practice preceded the advent of the religion. And the roots of that cultural practice have more to do with Darwin than Muhammad.
It’s true. I’ve tried and tried, and I cannot think of a single instance in the history of Christianity when the law was subordinate to religious issues. That’s because I’m the second most ignorant asshole on this messageboard.
[Arnold Horshack Voice]Ooh, ooh! Mr. Kotter. I know who the first most ignorant asshole on this message board is. Ooh, ooh! Mr. Kotter![/AHV]
The Bible, considered the religious text of Christians and Jews, supports the stoning of women (as well as men) for adultery or losing their virginity prior to marriage. It also permissable by the Bible to kill a disobedient child or sell them into slavery whether disobedient or not. It was a long, bloody battle to get secular law to supercede religious law in the West. Take a college level history course.
Neither. Albanian honor killings predate and are entirely separate from Islam. South and Central American honor killings are entirely distinct from Islam. Or shall we consider Catholicism part of it?
Seriously, this is not difficult research. Fuck’s sake, most of it is on goddamn Wikipedia. Surely you can manage that?
That particular claim is actually not so farfetched. The concept of secular vs. religious areas of life developed over a long period of time and, in the West, is in large part the product of Christian discourse. You can see the effects in how problematic different forms of secularism have been when exported out of the Christian West and how contentious and diversified it has become in Western countries with rapidly changing religious demographics.
You have Christian writers in the early years writing about how to be a good citizen of a pagan Empire, you have Pope Gelasius and the Two Swords doctrine, you have endless squabbles between kings, emperors, and clerics over areas of authority, and on and on. And even later, when people who did not identify as Christians got involved in this development, they still largely accepted and accept many of the assumptions that underpin these categories.
The secular/religious division is about apportioning power, it is not about rigorously describing phenomena. Like the distinction between religion and culture, it is meaningful as a construct but it is essentially arbitrary.
Oh Lord (so to speak). I am sorry I don’t have time to go gather the evidence, so I realize my post would not fly in GD, but this is the Pit, so … let me just say that this Pew study has been the subject of much amazed discussion among my friends in Indonesia, who disagree strongly with its results and have pointed out serious flaws in the methodology used (I can’t remember off the top of my head, but I believe it has to do with sample size, sample location, and the leading nature of the questions asked).
In short, that study is stupid and its results are not at all reliable, at least with respect to Indonesia.
ETA:@**ñañi **:
Well *somebody *is a history major 
But seriously though. When an English king has to found his own religion because a foreign religious potentate won’t let him divorce his wife, when monasteries impose taxation on the locals (up to one third of the tax burden !), when folks were used for kindling when they were not following - not even the right religion, but the right interpretation of that religion !..saying that secular law and the Christian religion/institutions were not intricately intertwined throughout Christendom is bugfuck silly.
And it’s certainly true that even today a number of folks in the US (up to and including statesmen & judges) believe that the laws of the land are directly derived from the Bible and the Ten, which is predicated on a certain ignorance of both the Bible and the historical foundation of the US+its legal framework
There was a feature on NPR, just today. They noted that British Muslims are unhappy with any association between them and the extremists, and that they were engaged in P.R. to make sure people understood the difference.
That’s a win. I’m satisfied. It’s the right thing to do, and makes me respect “Modern Islam.”
It’s not that different from the NFL, working to distance itself from spousal abuse and child abuse.
Yes, and you have countless examples of Islamic states being the most tolerant monotheists of their time, far more tolerant than their Christian neighbors.
Look, I definitely think that Islam is home to a death-cult that’s far nastier than the death-cults that currently infest Christianity or Judaism. But let’s not be ahistorical about it.