Well, I do declare. I suppose I’m one of the folks what were being too civil to SarahW. Well, excuse me for trying to fight ignorance–I’d like to think I know what I’m doing since I am a teacher IRL–without calling someone a dumb bitch and such like. I personally don’t think that’s necessary, and it detracts from the discussion. I reckon that if anyone should have been uncivil it should have been me since she ignored my questions. I didn’t think my questions were that difficult to understand. Now while I don’t agree with her views, I do respect her right to have them because it’s her life and she can think what she wants to. We don’t have all the details of her life–personally I’m wondering about what was really going on with her father–so if she finds the restrictions and harsh sexism in Salafism to suit her, well whatever.
My sense of SarahW is that perhaps she started that thread as a call for help. Though she’s made some unfortunate and idiotic decisions in her life, I don’t think she’s a moron. I mean, if she lived on the streets turning tricks and selling drugs, then she must have developed quite a survival instinct since I imagine you don’t survive long in that type of life, and she had sense enough to seek help and get out of that life. And, though she’s spouting off Salafist stuff, I have to wonder if in the back of her mind, she’s wondering just how much of that stuff really is true. She admits she don’t speak Arabic so I’d have to guess she’d have to wonder what them Salafist folks be sayin’ when they get to talkin’ in Arabic. Yes, she’s vulnerable and is grateful to the lady that saved her, but after awhile, if something ain’t adding up right, folks usually do seek out other opinions. She’s already had a warning signal what with witnessin’ that Muslim asshole what beat his wife in public.
I have to wonder how SarahW found the SDMB and why she started that thread on this message board dedicated to fightin’ ignorance. At any rate, I don’t think we ought to be running off folks like **SarahW/B because she’s the very type of person the board is designed to help. And, whether we like to think of it or not, she does represent a perspective of Islam, however warped it is. She does represent many Muslimas who live under that warped sect, even if she can’t tell us about MENA culture and customs. I would hope that SarahW learns from this board, and more importantly I would hope that she learns that outside of any religion, she has the power to forgive herself for the mistakes she’s made and not let anyone or any religion exploit the guilt she may feel for those mistakes.
Sweetie pie, you said that we dopers hate “almost anything Christian”. Your later mention of fundies in the same post doesn’t do anything to change your claim that dopers hate “almost anything Christian.” Polycarp is assuredly Christian, and quite the model of dedication to Christian ideals at that. We don’t hate him. Therefore, your statement that dopers possess a “zealous hatred of almost anything Christian” appears to be completely invalid. I didn’t limit my discussion to fundies because you didn’t.
We’ve already discussed whether the term “fundie” is a pejorative, and we’ve discovered that we don’t disagree on the topic (if you recall the discussion, I also informed you that (as a homo myself) I don’t consider the term “homo” offensive, after you attempted to use it as an analogy.) We’ll have to agree to disagree on the issue, but know that I have a good deal of respect for quite a few fundies (using the term in reference to the Fundamentalist Christian social/political movement in the United States) including quite a bit of my own family and a goodly number of my friends. As for you, my opinion of you didn’t change one iota (note the reference to the early Christian argument) when I realized you were a staunch Christian, because my feelings about you are motivated by other things.
Poly, like a number of people I’ve had the immense pleasure to know, follows the teachings of Jesus as much as he can, and as such, he certainly doesn’t follow the “Five Fundamentals” or other such dogma invented far later for less worthy purposes. Sharing Jesus’s views on how to treat humanity does pretty much make one a liberal, it seems. He also possesses an abiding faith, and a knowledge of Christian theological issues that could put virtually anyone else to shame. He has not yet, as far as I’ve seen, been condemned for sharing this knowledge. I suppose perhaps dopers are more discriminating than your quote (the one that claimed we hated “almost anything Christian”, remember?) suggests.
Far be it from me to deny a man his pleasures, especially when, as in your case, they seem to be so rare. But all on your own you’ve managed to show that the persecution complex you share with an unfortunate number of fellow Christians is simply not justifiable. You might benefit from less ideological self-indulgence and more hard examination of yourself and your own beliefs, Liberal.
But he did not parse the post, as I am doing here, in order to respond to the whole thing. See, this part of my response has little to do with the next part. In any case, he did in fact mention pitting — I even highlighted it for you.
It seems to me that that is what you’re doing with my post.
I wrote neither about the whole board nor about all Christians. Speaking to the OP, in reference to those who cut the Muslim bigot so much slack, I said that I believed it was born of an aversion to almost anything Christian. Despite however many times and with what paraphrases you and Buck rewrite my post, it stands as is until and unless a moderator edits it.
She’s a sad woman, no harm or danger to anyone. I congratulate her on turning her life around. I’m no sucker for Islam in any form to put it mildly, but if Islam helped her out of her former sad life, good for her and my best wishes. Even the life as a downtrodden third wife of a crazy Wahhabist is to be preferred over that of a drug addicted prostitute.
Also she can consider homosexuality a sin for all I care. So what? You censure her for a religious belief? She can believe what she wants as long as she doesn’t do anything about it.
Also I agree. It could be interesting to have some hard-core Muslim fanatics around. SarahW isn’t it though. Neither was Aldebaran. Pity he left. Now we have to make do with the hardcore fanatic liberals.
Oh, no, I wouldn’t want it to change. I encourage you to take responsibility for what you say by leaving it there for all the world to see. You’re attempting to backpedal in some way by trying to make some truly incomprehensible point about Christians or Fundamentalists or about how everyone is mean to you all the time, and people won’t realize how ridiculous your later posts are if they don’t see the entire exchange.
The fact is, you haven’t shown that anyone at all on the boards has an “aversion to almost anything Christian” except perhaps our beloved old crank gobear, and he hates every other religion as well. Why you feel such a need to jump to the defense of the worst sort of “Christians” I couldn’t say, but feel free to continue. It just makes your own character clearer.
gobear and I share a dislike for the sort of “Christianity” that would ostracize him for his sexuality and me for my lack of social standing. I cannot blame him for being mad that some people would deny him any legal rights and insult his commitment to his partner in the name of Jesus – it pisses me off too, because that’s my Lord whose Name they’re taking in vain.
And, when not so mad that he cannot see straight, gobear is quite quick to specify that it’s the hatemongers-in-the-name-of-Christ whom he pillories, not those of us who think that what He said about how to treat your fellow man is worth paying attention to.
Yes. We had a large number of fundamentalist christians, and I don’t remember many people demanding that they would be banned, even when they condemned homosexuality or made similar comments.
We also had many, many, people posting strongly prejudicied comments about muslims, that would never had flown if they had been made about other groups (this double standard has already been mentionned a number of time) up to and including stating that various muslims countries should be nuked out of existence. They generally weren’t banned simply because they said so (something I regret, by the way).
And indeed, in the current international situation, being offered the point of view of an actual fundamentalist muslim would be interesting.
Could you find one where someone actually advocated nuking muslim countries? That would be interesting to see.
Why? What is so interesting about wanting to murder anyone who disagrees with you or insults your god? I’ve certainly had enough of that viewpoint to last me a lifetime; I don’t think people should be banned for presenting it here, but I’m not sure why it would be any more valued than the neo-nazi viewpoint. I know I’m not desperate to get a bunch more of them in here.
I have little to add to Polycarp’s post except, “beloved old crank”? Dude, I’m only 43, I’m hardly “old”!
As for religion, meh, I’m ambivalent towards it. OTOH, the religious impulse has driven humans to create works of haunting beauty, like Chartres Cathedral, the temple carvings at Khajuraho, Angkor Wat, the St. Matthew’s Passion, the Upanishads, and has fueled many of humanity’s early scientific and social achievements. Egyptian priests developed mathematics to calculate the Nile annual flood, and Mayan priests created the most intirciate and accurate calendar of the pre-scientific era.
OTOH, it’s high time, IMO, for people to wake up and realize that there is zero evidence to support the proposition that gods exist, and there’s a great deal of evidence against. Still, people need to come to that understanding on their own, and so I’m prepared to put up with a world that relies on magical thinking. As Pterry puts it, prayer is just another word for pleading with thunderstorms. Still, as long as faith in God motivates good people like Poly to love others as themselves and to practice virtue, who am I to argue that they’re wrong?
But I have nothing but contmept for the small-minded hatemiongers who pervert their faith into a weapon of sadism and hatred. Fundamentalists are ignorant, hateful, barbarians who are trying to reverse every advance humanity has made, so they can drag us back to the caves of ignorance and fear. To hell with them and their sheep-like followers.
Bolding mine, of course. Since they usually can find some (no matter how tenuous) scriptural justification for their barbarism, I prefer “alternative rendering” to “perversion”.
I was hoping she’d be one of those really sharp fundies who could quote endlessly (with precision) from the Qur’an and had some familiarity with neo-Salafist politics. Turned out to be a bit of a mushhead, but there were some interesting side discussions.
Apparently, it was a public computer in the library, and she didn’t lock it when she left, and her neighbor used it. I’m not sure I buy that b/c the thread went on for days, so the guy would either have had to leave her logged in at all times and return to the same computer every time, or know her password, neither of which seems very likely. Oh well, maybe we’ll get a clearer explanation from her at some point.
I didn’t read the original thread, but it looks like the girl started this “ask the muslim” thread, got in over her head, and then decided to lie that she didn’t actually create the original thread.
Now while I don’t agree with her views, I do respect her right to have them because it’s her life and she can think what she wants to. We don’t have all the details of her life–personally I’m wondering about what was really going on with her father–so if she finds the restrictions and harsh sexism in Salafism to suit her, well whatever.