The religion of peace and toleration continues to amaze

[Sal_Ammoniac]

[QUOTE=What Exit?]
I am well aware that the Western Democracies, Japan, South Korea do not have horrific laws on the scale of most Muslim countries. I am also aware that where ever there is a despot, the law tend towards the horrific. I don’t think I was arguing this is strictly a Muslim problem, but these countries would be better off if the Religion got out of the courts and government and back to the Mosques where it belongs.
[/QUOTE]

But would Sudan suddenly be a better country if religion got out of the courts? Seems to me what we’re lamenting here is simply that there are countries which aren’t democracies. That some of them are Islamic is basically a red herring.

[What_Exit]

[QUOTE=Weirddave]
The thing that I love about these “debates” is that, by Der Tries’ definition above, atheism IS a religion, but he’ll never, ever admit it. It’s always amusing to watch him twist and turn trying to avoid admitting the ramifications of what he said. Either he’s an idiot who refuses to admit the meaning of what he said or he’s an idiot who in his zeal to attack religions defined them so broadly that the definition is meaningless and includes himself. Either way he’s an idiot.
[/QUOTE]

Oh come on, **Der Trihs ** is that crazy relative that comes to a holiday dinner, expounds yet another crazy thing and to the amazement of a new family member or guest is largely ignored by the all the members of the family that have been around for past diatribes. We come to expect these little gems of his and largely allow the conversation just to move on.

I feel as though **Sal ** or **Priceguy ** and I can exchange ideas and maybe learn from each other. Do you expect to learn anything from Der Trihs in these debates at this point?

The only thing I learn from him is a little more about him occasionally. This is different in the Café, so it would be like enjoying his company for the football game on the same day of the dinner. I had an Great Uncle like him, except he was a crazy old bigot instead. We were fine talking sports and stuff, but watch out for anything that smacked of foreign policy or history.

Jim

[tagos]

[QUOTE=Sal Ammoniac]
You make the mistake of thinking sharia is one thing – it isn’t. It’s an exceptionally broad framework, so broad as to be nearly meaningless. Jordan, for example, has maintained some aspects of sharia law, but the Jordanian constitution says flatly, “Jordanians shall be equal before the law.”
[/QUOTE]

Jordan? Where Sharia law governs family matters? Jordan - where apostacy is a crime. But being liberal islam you only get imprisoned so that’s cool.

How have other sharia courts treated religious converts?

Not favorably. For instance, in February 2006 an Afghan court struck down a motion by Abdul Rahman to convert to Christianity. He was sentenced to death for apostasy. The court, dominated by religious conservatives, later reversed its decision under international pressure and released Rahman, who then fled and sought asylum in Italy. Opinion surveys at the time showed that most Afghans, given their tribal history and religious conservatism, supported the death sentence for Rahman. The case, writes A. Rashied Omar of the University of Notre Dame, also highlights the controversial role (PDF) of Christian missionaries in Muslim societies, particularly given Islam’s own sense of dawah, or obligation to convert non-Muslims to their faith.

Other recent cases in Jordan, Egypt, and Kuwait were handled in a similar fashion, with the converts serving jail time. “Usually what happens in this case is it’s politically embarrassing and [the authorities] just find some way not to deal with it,” says Brown. However, often Islamic vigilante groups take the law into their own hands and kill converts, as they did in the case of a Bangladeshi Muslim-turned-Christian evangelist in 2003.

Jordanian religious law & children

Child Custody Law

In both theory and practice, Muslim and Christian courts in Jordan differ very little in how they resolve disputes over the custody of children of divorced or separated parents. The relevant laws all give priority for custodianship to the mother as long as certain restrictive conditions are met. In Muslim courts, this right of custody extends to the natural mother until the children reach 18 years of age. In cases where custody of small children is granted to a woman other than the mother, custody reverts to the father when a boy reaches age nine and a girl reaches age eleven. Christian courts will generally award custody to the mother until the children come of age.

In actual practice, the conditions placed on the mother’s primary right to custody often enable the father to maintain a great deal of influence on the rearing of the children even though he may not have legal custody. For example, travel restrictions exist in Jordan. The mother must seek the fathers approval to travel with the children. Frequently, he is actually able to assume legal custody against the wishes of the mother, when she is unable or unwilling to meet the conditions set by law for her to maintain her right to custody of the children.

A mother can lose her primary right to custody of a child in a number of ways. The court can determine that she is incapable of safeguarding the child or of bringing the child up in accordance with the appropriate religious standards. The mother can void her right to custody by re-marrying or by residing in a home with people that might be “strangers” to the child. The mother may not deny visitation rights to the father or the paternal grandfather and may not travel outside Jordan with the child without their approval and the approval of the court. In general, a Jordanian man divorcing his non-Jordanian wife will be awarded legal custody of their children by showing that any of the above conditions may not be met to the satisfaction of the court.

Equal before the law?

Jordan

Women in Jordan live in a mostly traditional Arab culture and are governed by a version of Sharia law. Their ruler, King Abdullah II, was educated in the United States, and his wife, Queen Rania, who had a highly successful business career before becoming queen, is a strong advocate for women’s rights. Whether or not Abdullah is inclined to revamp Jordanian laws and practices, drastic changes would likely be impracticable; the king knows that any measures perceived to be anti-Islamic could lead to violence or even revolution. (More than half of Jordan’s residents are stateless Palestinians, many of them young, unemployed, disaffected, and Islamist.)

Yet the country appears to be implementing some changes, however gradually. The U.S. State Department’s 2004 report on human rights in Jordan noted that, unlike in 2003, no cases of female genital mutilation were reported. Sexual harassment is strictly forbidden, and is not thought to be a widespread problem. In theory, Jordan permits women educational and employment opportunities in medicine, law, engineering, and other professions – and civil law guarantees equal pay for equal work. Yet in practice, many Jordanian women feel societal pressures discouraging them from such professions. Sharia law in Jordan mandates that male heirs receive twice the money that females inherit; women may not pass citizenship on to their children. (bolding mine)

In late 2002, Queen Rania caused a stir when she issued a decree granting Jordanian women the same rights as men in passing citizenship to their children. Rania is Palestinian, and many Jordanians insisted that her decree was designed to create a Palestinian majority among Jordanian citizens. Opponents argued that she would bestow Jordanian citizenship upon hundreds of thousands of children born to Palestinian fathers and Jordanian mothers. (Certainly, some objected to the decree simply because it increased rights for women.) As a result of the controversy, Jordan’s cabinet quietly weakened Rania’s decree to the point of obsolescence. In the fragile world of Jordanian politics, even a simple gesture toward gender equality can have unforeseen ramifications.

[tagos]

[QUOTE=What Exit?]
This does not seem like the best example, while I am repulsed by the concept of a 12 year old being married, I don’t understand the hang-up over a 17 year old getting married with her family’s permission. I don’t think it is wise, but I don’t think it should be illegal. I would think just the fact that the court system in India will not whip an unmarried female for being in a car with non-related males or arrests a teacher for allowing her class to name a teddy bear Mohamed would be better arguments.

I do think the two countries you picked are good examples.

Jim
[/QUOTE]

Of course - India has the whole Untouchable thing from its religion.

[Sal_Ammoniac]

tagos, your cites basically make my point. Imperfect though Jordan’s treatment of women may be, it is still light years ahead of Saudi Arabia’s or Iran’s. That’s my basic point – that “sharia” covers a very wide variety of legal arrangements. Whether in Jordan sharia trumps the constitution or the reverse, I’m unable to say. Suffice it to say that the existence of sharia has not ruled out a constitution that stresses the equality of persons.

[tdn]

[QUOTE=tagos]
Yes it is religion’s fault. Religion is purely what it does in the world, the mumbo-jumbo is mutable and irrelevant. If it is done in the name of religion it is religion that picks up the tab. Just like marxist leninism and nazism picks up the tab for their crimes.
[/QUOTE]

But is it really the fault of the religion itself? Did Muhammed specifically address what were acceptable names for teddy bears? Is it written in the Q’ran? My guess is that it’s the practicioners of the religion that are to blame.

[Cerowyn]

Never mind.

[Fuji]

[QUOTE=acsenray]
Are you serious? Come on, India has a history bloody enough to match any Mongol’s or Teuton’s. Just because there aren’t comparable big events in recorded history (or at least the one in your textbook – Didn’t Ashok make the rivers run red with blood at Kalinga?), you’re saying that that’s evidence that Hinduism is a whole is pacifist? That’s simply an unserious reading of human history.
[/QUOTE]

I never made the claim that Hinduism was a “pacifist” religion. That was Liberal’s assertion. However, given the context of the discussion we were having, I wanted to draw a disctinction between the historical (and current) track record of predominantly Hindu societies as contrasted with Christian or Islamic ones. My point was that, as contrasted with those two religions, Hindu societies have a far better record of tolerance and non-aggression (not pacifism, per se) with regards to non-coreligionists. And your equivalence of the bloodiness of Indian and Mongol history is simply asinine.

No, it’s a literal reading of the text. And you might dispute the specific terms I use, but you must agree that the philosophy it propounds is not anything that can be even remotely characterized as pacifism.

Yes - a literal reading. However, your calumny against Hinduism was predicated not on the literal text, but rather:

[QUOTE=acsenray]
The essence of the Bhagavad Gita, after all, is Krishna telling Arjun to murder half his family because that’s his duty as a Kshatriya.
[/QUOTE]

If you really think that this is the essence of the Bhagavad Gita, then I again re-iterate that your understanding of it is quite shallow and ill-informed.

As I said earlier, Hinduism is not a pacifist religion, and the Bhagavad Gita is not a pacifist text. However, going back to my original point about Hinduism being less intolerant than Christianity or Islam, can you find an equivalent to the verse I quoted to Der Trihs (post #56) in the Bible or the Koran?

[Malthus]

[QUOTE=Fuji]
I never made the claim that Hinduism was a “pacifist” religion. That was Liberal’s assertion. However, given the context of the discussion we were having, I wanted to draw a disctinction between the historical (and current) track record of predominantly Hindu societies as contrasted with Christian or Islamic ones. My point was that, as contrasted with those two religions, Hindu societies have a far better record of tolerance and non-aggression (not pacifism, per se) with regards to non-coreligionists. And your equivalence of the bloodiness of Indian and Mongol history is simply asinine.

Yes - a literal reading. However, your calumny against Hinduism was predicated not on the literal text, but rather:

If you really think that this is the essence of the Bhagavad Gita, then I again re-iterate that your understanding of it is quite shallow and ill-informed.

As I said earlier, Hinduism is not a pacifist religion, and the Bhagavad Gita is not a pacifist text. However, going back to my original point about Hinduism being less intolerant than Christianity or Islam, can you find an equivalent to the verse I quoted to Der Trihs (post #56) in the Bible or the Koran?
[/QUOTE]

Well, in Judaism there is the concept of the “Noahide laws” - in essence, any non-Jew who obeys cetain limited moral rules (no murder or stealing, that sort of thing) is considered ‘equally righteous’ to an observent Jew.

The term comes from the fact that Noah was righteous, and he wasn’t a Jew (Jews didn’t exist in his day, nor had the Jewish laws been handed down). There are certain commandments God gave to Noah in the OT, and they are binding on everyone - whereas the whole litany of commandments mentioned in the OT is only binding on Jews.

So the Old Testiment, filled with blood and thunder, is also the font of equality - at least, potentially. The larger point is that one can usually pick out bits good and bad from religious works; religious people who are good focus on the good bits, and religious people who are bad focus on the bad bits.

The whole argument strikes me as highly silly. Naturally, religion is not the equivalent of “athiesm”, as athiesm isn’t, by itself, a positive program for anything - it is merely a negation of belief in a diety. However, no-one is only an athiest alone, everyone has, in addition to athiesm, other beliefs in how society ought to be run, the relationship of the individual to society and to other individuals, etc. In these other beliefs, the athiest is just as likely to support measures kind or cruel, moral or immoral, as the theist. The theist who is into wahhabism is as likely to support atrocious acts as the athiest who is into communism.

[Fuji]

[QUOTE=Malthus]
Well, in Judaism there is the concept of the “Noahide laws” - in essence, any non-Jew who obeys cetain limited moral rules (no murder or stealing, that sort of thing) is considered ‘equally righteous’ to an observent Jew.

The term comes from the fact that Noah was righteous, and he wasn’t a Jew (Jews didn’t exist in his day, nor had the Jewish laws been handed down). There are certain commandments God gave to Noah in the OT, and they are binding on everyone - whereas the whole litany of commandments mentioned in the OT is only binding on Jews.

[/QUOTE]

Gotta love the Dope. I was only vaguely aware of something like that in Judaism. Thank you for dispelling at least a small part of my ignorance.

I still stand by my assertion in regards to the other two major Abrahamic faiths, though.

[Acsenray]

[QUOTE=Fuji]
However, given the context of the discussion we were having, I wanted to draw a disctinction between the historical (and current) track record of predominantly Hindu societies as contrasted with Christian or Islamic ones. My point was that, as contrasted with those two religions, Hindu societies have a far better record of tolerance and non-aggression (not pacifism, per se) with regards to non-coreligionists.
[/quote]

And this is a mug’s game. What is a “Hindu” society? Is it a country that is officially a Hindu state? Well, there’s only one of those (Nepal). Do we look at the history of such countries only since 1947 or do we get to go back centuries? Even if we stay within those borders, the idea that you can label Indian society as a whole, as a societal characteristic as tolerant and non-aggressive is bizarre (what do you get to call “aggression” anyway?). Maybe you could conclude that the Indian government has been more tolerant and less aggressive towards minority groups (“non-aggression” would still be bizarre).

And your equivalence of the bloodiness of Indian and Mongol history is simply asinine.

That’s a rather interesting thing to say. So you can prove conclusively that throughout millenia of history, Mongols spilled more blood than Indians? How shall we measure? By numbers of individuals killed or by gallons of blood? Any serious student of human history can only conclude that people have always been equally bloody, regardless of what “society’s” label you can put on them.

Yes - a literal reading.

Which I argue is a perfectly legitimate approach to take to a text.

However, your calumny against Hinduism

Calumny! Calumny! Dire calumny! You make it very hard to take anything you say seriously.

If you really think that this is the essence of the Bhagavad Gita, then I again re-iterate that your understanding of it is quite shallow and ill-informed.

And I’m sure you’re the master of textural and philosophical understanding.

As I said earlier, Hinduism is not a pacifist religion, and the Bhagavad Gita is not a pacifist text. However, going back to my original point about Hinduism being less intolerant than Christianity or Islam, can you find an equivalent to the verse I quoted to Der Trihs (post #56) in the Bible or the Koran?

And how interesting is it exactly to trade scriptural quotations? What does it prove? Does that verse change the essential nature of a person just because he labels himself a Hindu and the Bhagavad Gita is recognized as a Hindu text? People are people, and an honest understanding of history would show you that people aren’t really altered on a fundamental level just because of their local sky-god myths.

The idea that a society is somehow fundamentally altered because of a book that individuals regard as magical is really rather dubious. Societal conditions have to do with economics, politics, environmental factors, trade, and other concrete factors. The magic books are praised by all, but if what they say becomes inconvenient, impractical, impossible, or unpopular, well-informed and non-shallow understandings are easily discovered.

[John_Mace]

Seems like the Islamic world is about 400 years behind the West wrt human rights. Since that religion is about 600 years newer than Christianity, maybe things will shape up sometime in the next 200 years. God willing, of course.

[Malacandra]

[QUOTE=John Mace]
Seems like the Islamic world is about 400 years behind the West wrt human rights. Since that religion is about 600 years newer than Christianity, maybe things will shape up sometime in the next 200 years. God willing, of course.
[/QUOTE]

Interesting math. Where’s the other 200 years? The bellboy has it, of course.

[John_Mace]

[QUOTE=Malacandra]
Interesting math. Where’s the other 200 years? The bellboy has it, of course.
[/QUOTE]

Actually, I should have said “300 years behind”. We were still burning witches 400 years ago. It might take another 300 years to catch up (when Islam is ~1700 years old).

[mswas]

[QUOTE=Priceguy]
Someone writes a little book about how he thinks people should act, and 1500 years later people are whipping each other to death because they didn’t get the point. I hate all forms of religion, and every time I try to explain why someone will say that everyone who does bad things in the name of religion just uses it as an excuse and would have done those things anyway.

Well, convince me. Give me a coherent argument that this woman would have been arrested for allowing children to name a teddy bear Muhammad, in a world without religion. Go ahead. Hit me. I’m waiting.
[/QUOTE]

Hmm, so what you want is a coherent argument that things wouldn’t be better in your hypothetical fantasy reality?

I’m sorry I’m at a loss. I’m pretty certain that things will go the way you want them to in your hypothetical fantasy reality. I can’t come up with a coherent argument to the contrary.

[mswas]

[QUOTE=LonesomePolecat]
Well, if your argument is that religion makes people irrational and inhumane, then it’s obviously relevant to point out that people acting in the name of an explicitly atheistic political philosophy killed tens of millions of people around the world. Estimates vary widely, but the figure for those who died in Stalinist Russia and Maoist China could easily be as high as a hundred million. You can’t make that fact go away by sneering at my post.

Atheism and secularism don’t make more people more rational and humane. They just give the likes of Stalin and Mao a different set of rationalizations for commiting their atrocities.
[/QUOTE]

How about, evil will always be perpetrated by people who put ideology higher than human life?

[Sal_Ammoniac]

[QUOTE=John Mace]
Seems like the Islamic world is about 400 years behind the West wrt human rights. Since that religion is about 600 years newer than Christianity, maybe things will shape up sometime in the next 200 years. God willing, of course.
[/QUOTE]

Oh, come on! You might just as well say that 60 years ago, the West was 2,000 years behind the West with regard to human rights. Try to figure out the math on that one.

[Lord_Ashtar]

[QUOTE=FordPrefect]
If I understand you correctly, the atheists only need to come up with a short list of good atheist organizations and all our sins in Russia and China will be like water under the bridge. Is that correct?
[/QUOTE]

No, you don’t understand him correctly.

[John_Mace]

[QUOTE=Sal Ammoniac]
Oh, come on! You might just as well say that 60 years ago, the West was 2,000 years behind the West with regard to human rights. Try to figure out the math on that one.
[/QUOTE]

I wasn’t completely serious, but there is some truth to this. There is no reason to assume that all cultures “advance” wrt human rights at the same time. The West went through a period of enlightenment that spawned a revolution in Democracy and Human Rights. With hope, the Islamic world will have something similar happen. Only God knows when, though. But there isn’t anything inherent in Islam that makes the subjugation of women inevitable.

[Liberal]

[QUOTE=FordPrefect]
If I understand you correctly, the atheists only need to come up with a short list of good atheist organizations and all our sins in Russia and China will be like water under the bridge. Is that correct?
[/QUOTE]
No. If you understand me correctly, the atheists need show only one good atheist organization to invalidate the claim that atheism is inherently violent or evil or what have you.