Moving from General Questios to Great Debates.
samclem, Moderator
Whoa. That’s a very weird way to use the term “Islamist”, which generally refers to militant-extremist forms of Islam and advocacy of hard-line Muslim fundamentalism as the guidelines for civil society.
If in fact what you’re referring to is a Muslim-majority nation, why don’t you just say “Muslim-majority nation”?
Anyway, AFAICT Turkey has probably the most freedom of expression of Muslim-majority nations, with its adoption of various EU civil-liberties mandates, but its protection of free speech isn’t as far-ranging as that of the US.
Care to back that up with, say, cites from the Qur’an, along with on-point hadiths explaining how what you assert is, in fact, the case?
Excellent post. Can I also additionally request some evidence that freedom of speech is somehow more compatible with the Jewish and Christian Bibles.
The Bangladeshi constitution explicitly guarantees freedom of thought and expression, although until last year it essentially had no safeguards on freedom of the press (journalists could be arrested for defaming the government).
Is anyone making that claim?
Sure, see http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/Quran/012-apostasy.htm for example. Naturally punishment for apostasy is incompatiable with free speech.
No.
Please don’t tell me you think either thereligionofpeace.com or Andrew Bostom are reliable sources.
That’s like getting your information about Judaism from some neo-Nazi websites and David Duke.
What does this mean? That you don’t believe that freedom of speech is more compatible with Judaism or Christianity or that you don’t know enough about the Jewish or Christian texts to find evidence that it is?
Thanks
The implication of the thread is flawed. Freedom of speech is rare in Islamic countires - but also in non-Islamic ones.
And naturally that site wouldn’t be cherry picking to go along with its agenda as stated here, would it?
Sounds very unbiased. :rolleyes: Tell you what, I’ll wait for someone who’s not foaming at the mouth like that site’s author.
What lunacy. Reading a religion’s texts only and thinking you understand that religion is idiotic. It’s like reading the Bible and thinking you understand Christianity. The bible calls for stoning non-believers to death - does that describe Christian doctrine too?
Whatever, if you honestly think that apostasy is acceptable in most islamic societies you are hardly paying attention to the news!
I don’t see why I should bother discussing the subject at all, the fact that other religions are also silly is irrelevant.
“You’re not paying attention to the news” is also pretty lame evidence.
It also doesn’t answer the question in the OP.
The topic at hand is not apostasy. But since you’ve mentioned that, guess what Pakistan just did for a Christian pastor accused of apostasy from Islam. But before you do that, care to tell us what the Pakistani law on the subject of apostasy from Islam is?
Look, I agree that Simple Linctus has simply asked everybody in this thread to trust his confident swagger that he knows what he’s talking about, without any cites.
Nevertheless, states with Islam-based constitutions fare very poorly with respect to freedom of expression/the press, from cites both Wesley Clark and I have provided.
Secular states have much better track records. Israel, the only specifically Jewish state I know of, teeters right between ‘free’ and ‘partly free’ according to those same sources.
Bear in mind that this is all somewhat subjective. Would you rather live in a society where you couldn’t make fun of the state religion but you could say whatever you liked about the government and defamation was not legally actionable?
What’s your point? Pakistan does have a law against blasphemy that sees a fair bit of use and support from a large segment of their society. Not free speech by any stretch of the imagination. What’s Islam’s position on blasphemy? I’m fairly sure it’ll be pretty harsh. Not that any other major religion is much better of course.
The world isn’t divided between secular and Muslim states alone. Yet.
And plenty of secular states have terrible track records too. It’s not secularism alone that makes states free.
What other sort of states are there? There was one Hindu state, Nepal, that’s gone now. The UK is nominally a christian state, but I’d argue that in practice it’s a far more secular state than the US. And a tu quoque about secular states does not say anything about Islamic societies, which is what the thread is about
Most “Muslim states” are as “secular” as most western states(Turkey, France and the US being the only real exceptions that I can think of). Only a handful of Muslim countries are theocracies. Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Sudan are the exception not the rule.