My examples referred to the development of our modern categories of “secular” and “religious,” not to multi-faith societies. Muslim rulers (tolerant or not) and intellectuals before colonialism operated under very different frameworks than those that rose to prominence in Christian Europe. Then modernity came backed by the business end of a rifle.
Would supporters of authoritarian and oppressive governments in Islamic-majority countries count as members of a death-cult? How about American Christians who thought God wanted the US to invade Iraq? These questions aren’t rhetorical, by the way, at least for me it’s always interesting to think about the kind of violence that is normalized and accepted and the kind that is not.
As others have mentioned, honor killings are not prescribed in Islamic jurisprudence. One reason why you might not notice non-Muslims doing it is that when non-Muslims do pretty much the same thing, it is less likely to be called an “honor killing” in the media, as opposed to a crime of passion or simply a murder.
To the extent that Islamic jurisprudence (Rather than patriarchal norms that may or may not be sanctioned by local Islamic practice) plays a negative role in the phenomenon of honor killing, it is in that the murder of family members in Islamic law inhabits a kind of legal gray area, and if locals are not inclined to stop it, it can go basically excused. This is especially true now with the destruction of many traditional Islamic political structures.
While this situation is a serious problem in certain areas, it is a far cry from your claim.
Of course it’s unacceptable, but it’s unacceptable if the perpetrators are Muslim, Hindu, Christian, Atheist or other. All religions have some followers that commit honor killings, all religions have a majority of followers that condemn it.
If you were railing against honor killings, you’d have to look hard to find anyone who disagrees with you on this board. But you didn’t do that - instead you condemned an entire religion for the acts a some followers who aren’t really doing so in the name of the religion but instead because of cultural norms.
Now, now; I don’t play for points. I just do this for the sake of my art.
But I notice you didn’t actually answer the question. Please, have the courage of your convictions and don’t piss around. If you feel Islam is such a massive threat to the world it seems reasonable to assume you would like to see its adherents at least restricted in their movements and rights, and perhaps eliminated entirely. Do these assumptions correctly represent your position, or not?
Let’s switch away from honor killings and their cultural bases and look at apostasy, a religiously defined concept, which can’t predate Islam. 82% of the Jordanians surveyed said that those who abandon Islam should be put to death.
82% of the Jordanians who favor having Sharia be the law of the land said that those who abandon Islam should be put to death.
I now understand the earlier point (Richard Parker) that this is a subset of the population. But that sub-population is large (+70%), so it is probably more than half of the population of Jordan.
Nope, I’m a libertarian who follows the teachings of a certain pacifist Christian preacher who believed that humanity arcs toward justice.
The solution is of course not Final but Gradual: the shaming of barbaric Muslims as each successive generation realizes the horror of their cultural identity and comes to increasingly embrace the Western world’s democratic, secular values.
Far be it for me to strike a man with my fist; words cut deeper. It is not my place to force the horse to drink, but to merely show it the path. Should the throngs of barbaric Muslims choose to continue their barbaric practices they will reap what they sow. Fuck them if they do.
Say that Pew did a survey of Whites in Mississippi and found that 4,247,761 of them responded that they would support lynching of a black man strongly suspected of raping a white woman.
One way to respond would be to say… “Well, they are not actually lynching that much anymore, they just said they support it. Anyway, there are other Whites, like those living in Manitoba, that don’t support it.”
I’m not a Christian, so blind love is not in my purview. Though the pacifist, humanist teachings of Jesus are without a doubt of greater value to the world than the divisive, brutal, and Marsian ideas of the prophet Mohammed.
But, of course: it’s all cultural, relative, and the religious subtext means nothing.
And…y’know, much of it is purely culturally relative.
You don’t like Islam? Genghis and Tamerlane were a damn sight worse! At its height, before those worthies demolished it, Islam was the world’s shining light of reason.
