Thank you Kumquat. I think people are all too eager to place these sorts of problems and atrocities at the feet of the religion rather than at the feet of entirely seperate cultural issues or at the feet of those who ignore or pervert the scripture to suit their own ends.
And that’s a lot of feet! 
The bits I ‘cherry-pick’ is the bit the societies pick. Yours are just fantasy islam. But that is irrelevant. You are again ignoring my stipulation that Islam is what Islam does and at this point in time societies run along Islamic lines are not tolerant places.
When they run along the lines of your cherry-picked lines then Islam will be different. When Acqua’s sects define Islam it will.
And you cannot talk about ‘a muslim’ twisting things when that is the lines an entire society runs on. The entire historical weight of Islam as manifested in extant societies, the interpretation of the Koran and the life of the prophet in the 4 major schools of sharia law is oppressive of women. I’m explicitly not talking about individuals.
When a different interpretation has power then I’ll see Islam differently. Until then I happily judge the religion on how it acts in the world, how people live in societies ruled by the precepts as understood
Since at least some of the participants in this thread are, IMO properly comparing Christianity to Islam, I will join in. I’m not going to repeat the posts I have made before on the murderous actions of the Catholic church, Wojtyla, and the various cardinals in Latin America, since I’ve said it all before and so far no one has tried to refute, or even comment on, any of my posts; besides the Board search doesn’t seem to go back more than a year. Go here:http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=8322156&postcount=82 for the latest post I made.
Because I’ve been following the debates concerning the spread of Sharia Law and it’s pernicious impact. I’ve been following the progress of women’s rights organisations. I even helpfully linked to relevant information.
I can’t help it if you haven’t. This isn’t new or obscure information.
State Department 2005 Human rights Report
My point is that Indonesia is held up as the tolerant face of Islam and by that low standard it is but even so it does not reach an acceptable standard from western points of view. And Sharia Law is making the situation worse.
Have you asked the same question of people who like to rag on Christianity? You shouldn’t have any trouble finding someone here to ask.
You certainly have. And all you’re getting in response is fuck-you and la-la-la-I-can’t-hear-you. You won’t change any minds among the munchkins, but at least you put some sanity into the discussion and left a record for open minded people. Thank you for that. It is utterly bizarre that people who claim to champion gay rights and women’s rights refuse to condemn the very tenets of Islam under which they themselves stand condemned.
If I’m understanding the story correctly, the woman was blackmailed into being alone with an unrelated male. Both parties are being punished for this, so in this case it’s not misogynistic.
The rape was a subsequent act, but she is not being punished for having been raped.
So leaving the rape out of it, since that it not why she was sentenced to 90 lashes: She had to choose between going with the man (punishment of 90 lashes) or taking her chances that she would be believed when he showed presumably false proof of her adultery.
Yeah, let’s leave the rape out of it. After all, it probably had no effect on her whatsoever.
And let’s blame her for deciding to meet the guy when he blackmails her, and for not showing confidence that the Saudi justice system would take the word of a woman over that of a man.
You are an idiot.
Who the hell is refusing to condemn those aspects of Islam? What we refuse to do is condemn everyone who is a practicing Muslim for actions that they had no hand in, and which they do not necessarily support. But every time someone brings up those issues, it’s almost always in the context of, “Look how fucked up this entire religion is, and everyone who practices it, too.” And yeah, I’m going to speak out against that sort of prejudice, the same way I’m going to speak out against anti-gay or anti-woman (or anti-Christian, for that matter) prejudice. Because I’m opposed to prejudice as a matter of principle, not just self-interest.
My soul doesn’t have the stamina to read this entire thread, but I just would like to point out that Islam can not be considered one entity, just the same as Christianity.
I think we can all agree that what happened was wrong, but let’s try to be less ignorant about the targets of our hatred, shall we?
Good luck with that on this board, at least as far as religion goes.
Amen, buddy. It’s very, very interesting that when you look at the various threads on Christianity, and someone points out that the Bible says such-and-such thing supporting violence or mysogyny, there is a huge rush to defend the religion, and to point out that the vast majority of Christians are moderates and do not subscribe to these beliefs, that the fundamentalists are a fringe group, etc. But whenever there’s a thread about Islam, all of a sudden the religion itself is inherently evil. It’s truly amazing how selective people are with their reasoning.
All I’m saying is that it is disingenous to say “Raped woman sentenced to 90 lashes.” She’s not being punished for having been raped.
But who has done that? Who has condemned everyone who is a practicing Muslim? Just as many Christians take a metaphorical interpretation from the Bible, so I would reckon that many Muslims do with the Qur’an.
There’s nothing wrong with being a Muslim and there’s nothing wrong with being a Christian, but there is as much wrong with applying fundamentalist Islamic law as there is in applying fundamentalist Christian law. That’s why I don’t like codifying moral obligations into civic ones. Whatever law God or Allah might ordain, it should be between Him and His believers, not between the believers and the nonbelievers.
My only gripe about the whole thing is that it seems to be impossible to criticize Islam or the Qur’an without a flood of indignant rejoinders pointing out how Christianity and the Bible are as bad or worse. Setting aside how irrelevant such red herrings are, it’s just mind boggling that someone would bitch about a religion in which homosexuality is an abomination and women have to wear hats in church, but not bitch about a religion that punishes homosexuals (if married) with death and uppity women with 90 lashes. As Religious Tolerance says, “All Islamic schools of thought and jurisprudence consider gay acts to be unlawful.”
If there were a thread titled “Homeless beggar sentenced to 10 years”, would you assume the person thought he was being punished for being homeless? I took the OP’s title as a clue to the woman’s plight, not as a declaration that she was sentenced for being raped.
The OP, for starters.
And nothing about that supports an extrapolation from ‘Sharia law practiced by some nations’ to ‘all Islam’, now is there?
Why do people have such a problem with comprehending the simple fact that ‘some’ or ‘many’ is not the same thing as ‘most’ or ‘all’? I thought people learned this in kindergarten.
That’s the whole issue. A number of people in this thread have condemned “Islam”. Islam is the entire religion.
If the OP had simply declared his disdain for the government of Saudi Arabia, I GUARANTEE we wouldn’t have had an issue. But he declared himself a “sworn enemy of Islam”. He has since modified his position, but not before the argument got going. And subsequently, quite a few people have condemned all of Islam, and stated their belief that the religion itself is inherently evil.
If that were all anyone was saying here, I don’t think we’d have any disagreement.
But the indignation comes from the hypocrisy of people who decry Islam based on some cherry-picked quotes from the Koran, ignoring the billion Muslims on the planet who are NOT violent and are NOT terrorists, and in the same breath defend the tenets of Christianity.
From the OP:
Although, to his credit, silenus later retracted that. However, he’s hardly the only one to voice that sentiment on the boards in recent years. tagos seems to be making similar arguments. You’ve done it yourself, by insisting that the dictates of the Saudi government are indistinguishable from the practice of Islam world wide.
It’s relevant because it highlights a double standard in the way many people discuss Islam. The same people who so often are willing to tar all Muslims based on the practices of one sect of Islam are usually* willing to recognize that when one Christian sect does something horrible, it doesn’t reflect on the character of all Christians everywhere.
And again, no one is giving misogyny or homophobia any sort of pass. But if we have a thread about someone on the other side of the planet oppressing queers, and someone in that very thread talking about how all Muslims are hateful fanatics, I’m going to focus on the guy making bigoted statements about Muslims because he’s the one I can directly address. The asshole in Darfur who hates fags isn’t going to read the thread. The asshole in Dubuque who hates ragheads is, and addressing his bigotry actually has a chance of doing something useful.
*On this board, not so much.
I was reacting to statements like the following [all bolding mine]:
In fact, both the man and the woman are being punished.
In fairness to some of the above, they may be misinterpreting the OP based on the laws in Pakistan (recently amended), that have been in the news of late:
But again IMO it’s a government using a holy book to impose its cultural mores, rather than the other way round.