After reading Hamlet’s thread about the child beaten to death with an electric cord (it’s in the Pit), I got to wondering if any religions other than the Judeo-Christian-Islamic have this sort of problem, where children are beaten to death, or starved, or otherwise abused on an interpretation of the say-so of the religion’s Holy Book.
I know that some of the Hindu states have a problem with wife-burning, but I don’t know how much of that comes from their Holy Book, and how much of that is cultural and pre-Holy Book (if that makes any sense). I suppose this qualifies as some of the brides are Child-brides, and some of the burning comes because of insufficient doweries. (There’s a name for this phenomenon, but it’s slipping my mind at the moment.)
I understand that sane Jews, Christians and Muslims do not use their Holy Book to justify Child Abuse. I’m not intending this as an attack on the “Big Three” - I’m just wondering if this occurs in other religions and isn’t reported on as often, or if this particular form of madness and justification is exclusive to the monotheistic religions.
The Thugees, a now hopefully extinct Hindu sect devoted to the worship of Kali, used to beat anyone and everyone to death on the say-so of their holy book. Well actually they used to strangle them mostly to avoid spilling blood but the result is much same. If half of what I’ve read over the years is true 99.9% of Hindus are caring normal people and the .1% devoted to the more obscure sects have tried just about anything you can imagine.
Then of course we had the older religions like the Baal worshippers that used to practice child sacrifices, and the Spartans who used to leave unsuitable children to die of exposure to appease their war god. One of the Central American peoples, I think it was the Aztecs, scarificed children with some regularity judging from archaeological finds. At least some Aboriginal religions demand that illegitimate children be killed within the first year of life.
These are only the religions that essentially demand child abuse. In all religions there will be some psychos who use their religion to justify such acts. The Buddhist Chinese for example had no problem with foot binding while the Shinto Japanese practiced child prostitution. Since these practices weren’t secret I assume they were considered socially acceptable and justified by the religions of the peope involved.
Offhand I can’t think of one religion where some form of institutionalised child abuse wasn’t practiced while it was the primary religion of a nation. Based on that I’d have to say that there are always nutcases whoo will justify child abuse in the eyes of their religion.
Guin - I wish. Not that sutee isn’t awful from my perspective in its own way, but I’m talking about “house fires” that have young women in them, or men simply dousing their wives with gasoline and setting them on fire (and claiming the “stove did it” when the wife dies and isn’t around to contradict them).
SisterCoyote, while the practice of sati had some religious connotations, the “stove accidents” of which you speak have no religious motivation. They are usually the results of a dowry dispute between the two families, and also occasionally serve as a means for a man to easily get rid of an unsatisfactory bride in order to remarry. Dowry disputes are typical of the region, not the religion, and occur among Pakistani Muslims as well.
The World Almanac of 1992 gave these numbers:
Christians: 1.8 billion
Moslems: 970 million
Hindus: 733 million
Buddhists: 315 million
Atheists: 240 million
Jews are pretty far down the list at 18 million (less numerous than Sikhs and Chinese folk religionists).
On the other hand, the “Big Three” mentioned in the OP might not refer to numbers in quite this way. I think it’s more about considering Christians, Muslims, and Jews to be a sort of religious bloc, given their historical descent from the Abrahamic tree. I’m mixing metaphors. Sorry. Anyway, the point is, while members of those religions might not feel much kinship, from a distance they appear closely related. If these religious groups were smaller and/or the World Almanac was written in a land where the Abrahamics were not numerous, they might be lumped together as “Middle Eastern monotheistic religionists”, just as “Chinese folk religionists” are lumped together, presumably to the chagrin of people who practice any of the many distinct faiths that make up this group.
Abrahamics are certainly a huge group of people - just under 3 billion. So collectively, they are the “Big One” but you still have to count them as Three.
Well I don’t think I’m making much sense any more so I’ll go away now.
Well, to address the OP: The answer is, “yes, all other human religions on the face of the planet have the same problem with children being beaten to death as the so-called Big Three”.
The reason for this is because religions don’t kill children–people kill children. All human religions have had, do have, and will continue to have adherents who are also psychopaths who decide to beat their children to death. And there are people out there who don’t adhere to any religion at all who decide to beat their children to death.
Religion, of whatever shape, form, or variety, has nothing to do with whether people decide to kill their own children, and if you’ve got any kind of statistics that purport to show otherwise, I’d sure like to see them.
I agree with Duck Duck Goose. People who kill their children in this way are just psychos. They could find an excuse in any religion. If they were atheists they’d probably blame it on the voices in their heads.
I know that. Which is why I asked about folks from those other religions using their religious texts as justification for child abuse. See the last paragraph in the OP.
I’m not saying that one group has any more statistical probablility of beating their children than any other. What I’m puzzled by is why the Bible comes up so often as an excuse for bad behaviour. Simple statistical fact - there are more Christians than other religions? Bias on the part of the media (although I think the media would jump all over a pagan parent who said, “well, the book of shadows handed down from my great-great-grandparents says this is what to do, so…”)?
Like I said, I know that sane Christian parents don’t engage in the behavior mentioned in the OP. nor am I blaming Christians/Jews/Moslems for the bulk of child abuse that happens.
Actually, SisterCoyote, I think that people in industrialised nations are just more likely to go insane in this particular way. For example, schizophrenia is more common in developed nations and urban areas. So you’ll hear of such cases more frequently in America or in Europe than in Asia. As Christianity is the dominant religion in these areas, this might lead you to believe that the Bible is more easily misinterpreted in this way than other religious texts.
Another point to consider is that parents in under-developed nations are not held as accountable for their actions towards their children. They often discipline children very harshly but this is not considered unusual in their society. They are not accused of breaking the law and thus don’t need to justify their actions by pointing to the relevant passages of the holy texts.
Eh, it’s just a statistical bias, is all. There are a lot more Christians in America than there are people of other religions, so it’s just statistically more likely that in America more Christians are going to beat their children to death than people of other religions.
Implicit in the OP and the referenced pit thread is the idea that “forty lashes minus one” is a phrase in the bible that someone could take literally as the excuse for child abuse.
However a search on the Bible Gateway search engine reveals only one passage in the NIV bible, and that is Paul claiming to have received “forty lashes minus one” five times from the Jews.
Of course, if you regard corporal punishment as child abuse, I’m sure you can find the passage about "spare the rod and spoil the child. However I can’t see the connection between any modern religion and child abuse, unless you want to question some severe puberty rites among some isolated tribal populations, or circumcision.