Looks like a hate site to me.
What gave it away? The call on the front page to either “‘reprogram’ (close down mosques, schools and ban the Koran) and remove Islam” or “imprison or remove Muslims from our land?” Jingoist, racist, knee-jerk horseshit.
No, you have not shown that, actually. But first, you misquoted me here, leaving out an important detail. What I said was that Muslim communities are known to be homophobic, misogynist, anti-Semitic, and openly hostile to Western societies, cultures and morals. Not that every Muslim feels the same way or that herp derp “all Muslims are evil” as you stated in your straw man attempt, but that these attitudes predominate the culture* within* these insular communities. This is not something that they broadcast loudly to outsiders, but neither is it any kind of secret.
Now, on to your supposed evidence of tolerance:
First off, a little about ISNA. It was formed by members of the Muslim Brotherhood, including Ahmed Elkadi who “directed the U.S.-based branch of the Muslim Brotherhood from 1984 to 1994”. The organization is essentially one of the Muslim Brotherhood’s American tentacles, advancing the same agendas as the Brotherhood in a different environment, using different tactics.
Let’s take a look at the Brotherhood’s website and see what they have to say about tolerance towards homosexuality. This is an excerpt from their[Statement on Islamic Law and National Identity](Statement on Islamic Law and National Identity):
That’s right, they cannot in any way compromise in demanding to apply Sharia, so* international treaties that call for violating Sharia in any way cannot achieve such purposes, like attempts to legalize homosexuality*.
So, how can a group that is an American tentacle of this organization support an LGBT anti-discrimination bill? To understand this you have to understand it’s worldview and that of the founder of the Brotherhood, Sayyid Qutb. In short, like other Islamists, the Brotherhood, and it’s progeny groups such as ISNA, MSA, and CAIR, view the world as being divided into Muslim and non-Muslim lands, and they view the world outside the umbrella of Islam to be irredeemably decadent and broken (especially America, Qutb spent time in Colorado which inspired his contempt for the West). Their goal is to enforce Sharia in lands they consider to be Muslim, and to grow Muslim presence and normalize Islamism in lands they consider to be non-Muslim. ISNA is under no illusion that it can enforce Sharia over all of America, so it joins in with calls for tolerance for homosexuals, but only in the public sphere in non-Muslim lands, in societies they already see as beyond redemption, and only among populations which they have no power over anyway. Their cousin organizations in the UK represent a higher proportion of the population, especially in public universities. There, where they have more sway, they have successfully lobbied for religious exemptions to policies prohibiting gender segregation in public institutions, claiming that their introduction of gender apartheid is simply an exercise of the “freedom to manifest their religion”.
What sort of gender-based codes of conduct does ISNA enforce when it has the ability? Take a look at this clip, from the movie Taqwacore, which took place at their annual national conventions. Yep, that’s right, they were thrown off the stage and threatened with arrest for having a female singer, because, according to ISNA, a female singing in public is not Islamically appropriate. It is quite troubling that the largest US Muslim organization has this position.
What do members of ISNA have to say? Here is their board of directors. Note the current membership ofMuzammil H. Siddiqi, who “served two terms (1997-2001) as President of” ISNA. Here is what he has to say about homosexuality:
I forgot to add the link to the video, and missed the edit window. Here it is. Pigs are haram!
So you say that in western countries, Muslims are going to conform to the social order, and, per the evidence I provided earlier, are more likely to be law-abiding, respect the institutions of justice, and be loyal to their country than the average citizen. So tell me again why you’re working so hard to keep them out?
And yet, women’s rights are recognized and respected in heavily Muslim countries like Indonesia and Bangladesh. Bangladesh has a freaking female Prime Minister fer Christ’s sake. I don’t know if she can sing but I’m pretty sure she’d be allowed to. :rolleyes:
If you want to play this game of spinning associations I can play it, too. According to the census bureau the top five states with the highest rate of violent crime are South Carolina, Tennessee, Nevada, Louisiana, and Florida. One can understand Nevada with the gambling economy, and Florida with the Mariel boatlift fiasco and the influx of criminal refugees who were never vetted, one of the biggest immigration screwups of all time (but good Roman Catholics all!). But what about the other three?
Turns out, these highly violent states are also among the nation’s most religious – SC is #4 in religiousity, Louisiana #5, Tennessee #7. And every one of them is reliably Republican, in current governorship and in terms of a predominant Republican slate in Congress.
So the obvious moral here, using your impeccable logic, is that in the interest of public safety the US should ban the immigration of Christians with Republican leanings.
The same idea is supported by looking at the list of most religious countries, where there tends to be an inverse correlation between religiosity and degree of peacefulness and civility. The countries towards the bottom of the ascending-order list of religious devoutness tend to be third-world shit-holes, and while many at the bottom are Islamic countries, many are not: Zambia, [un]Democratic Republic of the Congo, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Colombia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia, Cyprus and many other mostly unstable war-torn lands are predominantly Christian.
If someone wants to criticize Islam I’m on board. I don’t like it. But it’s annoying and illogical the way all its practitioners are being demonized.
Again with the straw man arguments. When have I tried to keep them out?
Your using Indonesia as an en example of respect for women’s rights and then rolling your eyes. :smack: You must be getting these memes from CNN or something.
Self-defeating extremes-Kunwar Khuldune Shahid:
*When 2 million women in Indonesia have their clitorises cut every year and 60-90% Malay women undergo female circumcision, it obviously isn’t just an ‘African problem’. Not after Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) with 40 million followers in Indonesia has given a fatwa in favour of FGM and the fact that 82% Malaysian Muslim women claim that it’s a religious obligation.
Even though seven of the eight countries with the highest FGM percentages are African Muslim countries, Eritrea and Ethiopia prove that it’s not an exclusively Muslim issue, while Indonesia and Malaysia attest that it’s not an exclusively African issue either. Not to mention the fact that the 91% in Egypt can’t be put down to ‘African tribal culture’, with the Muslim Brotherhood wholeheartedly endorsing FGM.
Aslan, like many others who vie to deflect attention away from women’s suppression in the Muslim world, pointed out that Muslims have ‘elected seven female heads of state’ while the US has none, completely ignoring the fact that Benazir Bhutto, Megawati Sukarnoputri, Begum Khaleda Zia and Sheikh Hasina Wajed became heads as a part of politics of kinship, while both Atifete Jahjaga and Tansu Çiller were elected in constitutionally secular states with Mame Madior Boye and Roza Otunbayeva being appointed and not elected.
In any case if electing female state heads mythicises women’s suppression in the Muslim world then the Bhuttos, Asif Ali Zardari, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, and other Pakistani heads of state belonging to Shia community, mythicise the ongoing Shia genocide in the country.
How hard is it to acknowledge a simple fact that women are generally more supressed in most Muslim countries?
The World Economic Forum’s recent Gender Gap reports highlights that 17 of the 20 at the bottom of the gender gap rankings, 20 of the 28 with the biggest literacy gaps and 22 of the 27 countries with women being less than one-third of the adult workforce are all Muslim countries. No, the scathing stats don’t represent all women in all Muslim countries, but they do represent most women in most Muslim countries.
It is absurd to tout Indonesia, with FGM and virginity tests galore, as examples of countries where women aren’t supressed.*
I don’t even know what you are trying to accomplish here but I can tell you that it doesn’t have anything to do with what I have posted. It comes across as outdated political tribalism to me.
What idea exactly are you supporting here?
Me too. I don’t like that. Did someone do that here? If so I missed where posters demonized all practitioners of Islam. There sure are plenty of replies, such as yours, to that phantom position though.
You indeed appear to have missed quite a lot. Let me summarize at least three major points that were being made demonizing Muslims. If you’re having trouble understanding what drives the kind of bullshit behind this headline … More than half the nation’s governors say Syrian refugees not welcome … maybe you’ll understand after reading a few of these:
1. Admitting Muslims into a country breeds intolerance and violence:
So one consequence of bringing large numbers of refugees into the country is that you can expect that every community where the refugees are settled will grow in opposition to abortion rights, gay rights, women’s rights, etc. You can see this happening to a larger degree in Europe, with their larger percentages of Muslim immigrants. Those societies are growing more intolerant, more violent, and more closed. Support for free speech is collapsing, Jews are being persecuted, and rape and violence against women is increasing, with the highest increases in the areas containing the most Muslim immigrants.
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=18893184&postcount=103
… the problems going on in Europe are horrendous … The big problem no one is talking about there is the lack of ANY tolerance for atheist and other religions by these immigrants. It is more than just the Paris attacks it is a systematic attack in many areas of the culture in the various European countries … Violence (not counting terrorist attacks) committed by Muslims in various countries both Islamic and non Islamic like India, Philippines, Bali, Holland, Switzerland France etc etc on and on is extremely high and there is no way all of this is conducted by just a small minority.
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=18895368&postcount=154
2. All Muslims are the same:
… all my posts in this thread have been condemning Islam because the ideals and values that it officially espouses (eg CDHRI) are alien and incompatible with western values … Well being signed by the governments of 45 Muslim countries in my opinion means its a declaration that is pretty much clearly representative of all muslims.
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=18895556&postcount=158
That’s how we end up with Gallup polls taken in Britain in 2009 which show that, among 500 Muslims polled every single one of them without exception thinks homosexuality is immoral.
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=18898201&postcount=203
3. So let’s smarten up and keep the bastards out:
… its perfectly reasonable to have concerns about the future effects on politics and values of a society from the effects of a rising muslim population.
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=18895764&postcount=165
This isn’t something I want in my country. We have enough home grown bigots as it is. We don’t need to import any more.
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=18895721&postcount=163
Of course, let’s not pay any attention to the fact that the form of “FGM” in Indonesia is less violent and less destructive than standard male circumcision practiced in North America. Let’s just lump any and all acts together with clitorectomies and infibulation and pretend that they are all the same thing.
None of these examples demonize all practitioners of Islam, as you have claimed. The closest is the assertion that a declaration signed by 45 Muslim majority countries is pretty much representative of all Muslims. Those are not words I would have chosen, but they are qualified, and is as reasonable as saying that the Universal Declaration of Human rights is “pretty much” representative of Westerners.
The rest of your examples are arguments that you are simply ducking with your straw man approach. For example number 1. you can expect that every community where the refugees are settled will grow in opposition to abortion rights, gay rights, women’s rights. You are simply casting the statement as evil and refusing to acknowledge it’s validity. It’s a well supported position, but all you have managed is to characterize it as meaning “all Muslims are evil”. This is a real challenge to integrating people from these backgrounds, and those of* us* who feel it to be our duty to admit refugees need to acknowledge the problem so we can deal with it. I don’t want to turn away refugees, and I also don’t want my gay friends and family to continue to be the subject of harassment by Muslim immigrants, who seem to constitute the bulk of those brazen enough to currently be openly homophobic towards people who I know.
I don’t want any of those things, either. I probably know about as many Muslims as gays, a very small number, and I don’t have a problem with any of them.
It’s one thing to acknowledge the problem with Islam, it’s quite another to keep hyping it until the flames of Islamophobia become a full-fledged inferno. As if the extremely low US quota on Syrian refugees isn’t bad enough, the outright refusal of at least 31 state governors to admit any at all is just reprehensible. And when some of them say they might consider admitting some of them but only if they’re certified Christians, you know exactly the nature of the bigotry at work.
The problem is that if the US doesn’t do its part, other countries have to do disproportionately more, or just give up and turn the refugees away to suffering and probable death. At this point the US, with a population of 320 million, says it will admit just 10,000 refugees, and half the state governors, pandering to their bigoted constituencies, shamelessly declare that the number should be zero. Meanwhile Sweden, with a population of just 10 million, has so far already admitted more than 190,000 and at a press conference the other day the deputy prime minister broke down in tears and said they just can’t do any more because all their resources are stretched to the limit. This startling difference isn’t necessarily – or at all – a measure of national kindness or empathy, but rather the insidious venality of the politics of fear.
Are you really going to defend female genital mutilation now?
I don’t know how you can manage to cram so much wrong into such a small amount of text.
You link to a story about a campaign to lessen the severity of FGM rather than try to eliminate it, since this is seen as unlikely given common religious beliefs. Then you try to imply that the less severe form pushed by activists is the form of “FGM” in Indonesia. The article that you cite explains:
and:
So you accusing me of lumping any and all acts together with clitorectomies and infibulation and pretend that they are all the same thing when** you** are the one trying to pretend that the least severe form is the form practiced, rather than the result of an attempt to lessen the damaged caused by mutilation. Despite your accusation, I merely referred to all of it as FGM, as it is defined by the World Health Org, which* your* cite explains.
And then you go on and try to equate FGM, which has no known medical benefit, to male circumcision, which does. Do you really want to try to make the comparison between the mutilation of approximately 90% of women and girls happening in Indonesia, which includes something like one in five women having had their fucking clitorises entirely removed, with the circumcision happening in North America?
I think terms like “unmitigated catastrophe” ought to be reserved for stuff like the Mongol invasions, the arrival of Cthulu, large asteroid impacts, gamma bursts, etc. Not a majority ethnicity maybe becoming a bit less of a majority ethnicity due to immigration and disparate birth rates. When you throw around terms like that, you’ve got nothing left to describe actual catastrophes.
No, having one of them ay-rab moo-slems move into the neighborhood is every bit as bad as being wiped out by an asteroid! In fact here’s a catastrophe unfolding right now in the rural setting of Prince Edward County, Ontario, as one of the first of the Syrian refugee families settles in. Notice the terrorist slogans on the girl on the left and the little boy in the middle.
One of the older boys is disguising his violent intolerance of western society by interning as a rural veterinarian’s assistant, and the other wants to be an electrician, no doubt to further nefarious purposes related to violent homophobia. The younger children are planning to infiltrate the local elementary school, and the consequences I’m sure will be fearsome.
Not particularly. It seems to be an superstitious rite that has held on for no particularly good reason.
However, you attempted to invoke the image of clitorectomies and infibulation with your reference to Female Genital Mutilation, carefully omitting the fact that those are not the actions being performed in Indonesia, as a sign that women in Indonesia are being subjugated and oppressed.
So, in your view, that while some large percentage of girls are subjected to rituals that vary between scraping a needle across the skin without even drawing blood to having a small bit of flesh clipped, generally described as smaller than a fingernail paring, is a sign of utter oppression, 100% of boys are subjected to circumcision, which by any objective standard is genuine bodily mutilation, and it carries no burden of subjugation or oppression. Only your 22% figure comes close to a claim of a clitorectomy, (without actually meeting the definition), and the article indicates that it is dying out. This is hardly a sign that “women” in Indonesia are being oppressed.
You are simply appealing to the legitimate revulsion at clitorectomy to conflate it with different rituals. (And your claims about female oppression fail when we consider that the act performed on girls is far less than the act performed on boys.)
That is exactly what you are doing, defending FGM, and it is sickening.
WTF? I referred to female genital mutilation. You are attempting to defend it with the absurd strategy of pointing out that some of it is more mutilating than others.
Female genital mutilation, of varying degrees of severity, is widespread in Indonesia.
The point was precisely this: *It is absurd to tout Indonesia, with FGM and virginity tests galore, as examples of countries where women aren’t suppressed. * And your apologies for the mutilation of girls haven’t changed this fact one atom.
Who was it that you said that was carefully omitting details? The very link you gave in your weak attempt to defend the brutal practice show’s that this point of your’s is wrong (your article says that all FGM is harmful, and that none of it is beneficial or supported by medical data, as well as the fact that millions of Indonesian women undergo mutilation more severe than your carefully selected examples) and I pointed this out to you, and you ignore the facts and just keep right on being wrong. All FGM is mutilation, you are the one carefully leaving out the most severe form, as if the existence of varying degrees of brutality, and attempts by activists to limit the damage done by this practice, excuses the practice and somehow means that using a place with widespread FGM can be used as an example of respect for women’s rights. It most definitely does not mean this.
No, it is surgery, with known medical benefits, which is highly effective at preventing the spread of disease. That you continue your trend of repeating falsehoods without responding to refutations of them is a hint that you might just, deep down, have an idea of how weak your arguments are. I doubt you have any clue how insulting they are to women though, or to feminists, or to any human with the decency to value the physical welfare of others over their own petty tribalism.
Why the fuck would you put “women” in quotation marks?
Your reference to the most severe forms of FGM does nothing to negate the brutality of the less severe forms.
No, I referred to FGM, all forms of it. You are simply trying, and failing, to use an elaboration of the different sorts of mutilation of girl’s genitals in a strange attempt to counter the claim that it is absurd to use a nation where this practice is widespread as an example of a place with respect for women’s rights. This implication of your’s that revulsion to the mutilation of girls is only “legitimate” when their entire clitoris has been removed is inexcusable.
You are conflating surgery with known benefits with female genital mutilation. Not pretty.
It is really disgusting that your urge to defend Islam trumps even a basic human concern for the welfare of the millions of girls who are victims of this brutal practice.
Nah. You are simply latching onto a buzzword that you know evokes revulsion, pretending that it is all bad, (supported by a group of people who happen to share your beliefs who are willing to overstate a phenomenon for their own purposes), while pretending that the similar practice applied to men is not oppressive.
You are pretending that circumcision, as it is practiced in Indonesia, is the same as the hospital administered ritual performed in the U.S. (which has only begun to be performed using anesthesia in the last few years and which is opposed by a lot of people who point to its benefits being mostly imaginary).
I do not support any form of FGM, but I am not hypocritically pretending that all versions are far worse than circumcision as practiced in a particular country in order to invent an argument claiming that one ritual is oppressive to women while the other is beneficial to men.
No, Islam isnt the enemy. But some days, like today, one does find oneself wishing that Mohammed had been run over by a camel before he’d started his religion.
A buzzword? Female genital mutilation invokes revulsion because mutilating girls is REVOLTING. The article you cited explained that all forms of cutting of girls genitals is harmful, that none of it is beneficial, and thus all of it is considered by the World Health Organization to be Female Genital Mutilation.
This is the THIRD time that you have done this, claiming that the less damaging forms of FGM are** THE** forms practiced in Indonesia, when the very article that you cited explains clearly how this is not true, and how the least damaging forms of FGM are only due of the efforts of activists to reduce harm, and are often resisted by the mainstream public and religious leaders. I keep explaining this to you and you just keep humming with your fingers in your ears and pretending not to hear it.
Male circumcision has been shown to have medical benefits at both an individual and a population level. Decreasing the likelihood that someone will acquire and spread HIV or other sexually transmitted diseases is not a “mostly imaginary” benefit. To claim that it is is a rejection of science, and to equate it to FGM is an absolute betrayal of the hundreds of millions of girls who have been mutilated by the procedures you are defending, which are known to be harmful and have NO known medical benefits.
The only one bringing “invented” arguments to the table is YOU. You seem to have a pathological need to downplay the damage done by Islamic religion and traditions, the fact that you have now sunk to defending FGM shows how far off the deep end you are with your bias.
Again, the claim that it is absurd to tout Indonesia, with FGM and virginity tests galore, as a place that respects women’s rights, is ABSURD, and nothing you have brought to the discussion diminishes this well established point, not in the slightest.
It is the muslim fundamentalists that are the problem. The more closely they follow the Quran and Hadith, the more violent they are.
And that is another issue. Many of the “religion of peace” brigade will tell us “nowhere in the Quran does it say…” Yet we will find these things in the Hadith, which devout muslims follow as closely as the Quran.
There is so much contradictory stuff in the Koran and Hadith that what you are claiming here is not always true. For example, the Koran commands us to read and dares us to find another book that compares to it. If you follow this command closely you will reject much of the rest of what is in the texts, because it is of such a low quality in comparison to so many other books that came before it and since, in terms of knowledge. Many Muslims throughout historyhave followed more enlighten paths to interpretation, those are just not the dominant strains of belief at this time.