Or are the two incompatible?
(maybe a GD thread. If so, fine.)
Define ‘Islamist’.
Define ‘freedom of speech’.
According to WikiIslam, which has a certain…point of view…no.
But I echo the request for a definition of Islamic society. Does the *government *have to be explicitly religious?
Mali is 90% Islamic, and has legally protected freedom of expression.
By usual definitions of Islamist, no. It’s completely incompatiable with the koran.
Apologists would say there is freedom of speech in the sense that anyone calling the koran out as the evil thing it is is clearly insane and very much akin to the proverbial fire shouting in the theatre. Every time they use an argument like that, you should burn fifty korans.
Of course there are majority islamic states with freedom of speech (I assume out of politeness, I can’t think of any though - mali certainly doesn’t count!) but they are not islamic
It means any government that adopts Islamic Law as its primary law. (Iraq in 2005, for instance).
No, that would be ‘Islamic’, as in an ‘Islamic society’.
I want to know what the OP meant by ‘Islamist’.
Why not?
OK, you caught me.
Congrats.
Actually, my usage seems to be correct.
Because its constitution has about as much value as that of the 1977 soviet constitution, which also guaranteed freedom of speech. A constitution has no meaning at all unless it is actually followed. That is the thing that makes the British semi-written at best constitution considerably more valuable than say the 1991 Sierra Leone constitution.
What’s your cite that Mali’s constitution is not followed? Freedom House rates Mali as ‘free’ with a rating only 3 points away from the UK.
Yeah, one minute they’re calling the Koran evil. Next they’re denying the Holocaust. They go on about free speech, but give them half a chance they’d take away freedom of speech from anyone who disagreed with them.
These people are not insane. They’re malevolent morons.
The Judeo-Christian bible is full of murder, mayhem, plus gibberish and nonsense. That’s what I believe. Precursors of UFO religions.
Do you believe the world is 8 thousand years old?..What about the fossils?,the fossils?
Talk to Christians who don’t believe in evolution. Don’t even mention evolution, just talk to them about dog breeding. And they’ll yap away about the amazing diversity of breeds. And that you can do all that with selective breeding. They’re morons.
You have gardeners, farmers etc, who don’t believe in evolution. Yet, they do evolution all the time.
Presumably, such a society would have a law against blasphemy, (or else the reference to Islamic Law being its primary law would be purely cosmetic, I guess), and so freedom of speech would be limited at least in this way. Possibly it would also have a law against (non-Islamic) proselytism.
Note by the way that this would be true also in a “Christian Society” defined in the same way.
When I think of it, I believe that Algeria refers to Islamic Law in its constitution, but I don’t think blasphemy is on their books. I’m not sure of either statement, though. And anyway, if true, it would just be an example of a country that is “Islamic” only nominally (for instance, the UK is technically an “Anglican” society, with no separation of Church and State, but it hardly matters in practice).
The more I think about it, the more it appears to me that this question is about who is a “true Scotsman”.
Is there freedom of speech in any theocracy?
An Islamist society is not directly a theocracy. There are some, as pointed out above, but the majority of Islamist societies are not theocracies.
Does freedom of speech exist in any society? Doubtful really. Pretty much every country on the planet has laws against some forms of speech. Inciting racial hatred is a common one prohibited in many western nations. Most of Christendom was once more than happy to burn heretics at the stake. As noted by clairobscur blasphemy laws exist in nominally Christian societies. Indeed the Wikipedia page on blasphemy laws makes very sobering reading. Successful prosecutions for blasphemy against the Christian religion have been relatively recent in many countries. It may be that the USA is one of very few countries on the planet that prevents prosecution for blasphemy. Ireland on the other hand still has blasphemy in its constitution.
If you want to create some form of ultra specific argument about freedom of speech that only worries about direct affront to a specific religion, it gets just silly. Do Islamist nations prohibit criticism of the government? Many do not. Many non Islamist states do. A some parts of the planet still have laws that can get you a lifetime in a prison camp for trying to expose corruption in the government. Singling out nations with laws that prohibit criticism of the established religion as not having free speech suggests a specific agenda that falls way short of the real question of free speech and its value to society.
The soldiers who overthrew the government of Mali in March of this year expressly suspended the country’s constitution. Also, the Islamic militants who declared a breakaway nation in the northern half of Mali around the same time apparently stated their intention to impose Islamic law.
Basically, Mali got royally f–ked by the war in Libya.
Maybe, but I don’t know if it has anything to do with religion.
Back in 2001-2002 freedom house found Islamic countries were far less free than non-Islamic countries.
I thought there had been progress, but I guess not. As of 2012 29 not free, 20 partly free, 3 free. Which sucks, I thought a lot made progress of moving from not free to partly free.
I’m using the definition of ‘islamist’ as a nation with an Islamic majority, 51% or more. It doesn’t need to be a state that enshrines Islam into the government.