Glas, I agree that religion is inherently not necessary and I personal find it to be ridiculous to a certain degree but I don't share your sentiment from an overall perspective. Quite frankly throughout history religion lives and dies out. This is the basis of my premise that it should be seen as a right for the population to evolve. I'm not suggesting religion is a form of evolution, in fact I'm suggesting the opposite. Look at what it does to scientific fact)Not all religions do this btw, however). It must be concluded that we treat the actions of all people the same. We cannot treat crimes differently because it creates a sense of moral obligation in relationship with one's desire to commit the crime. Someone having committed a crime should be dealt with according to the outcome not the motive.
It can just as easily be argued that without religion murders would be more abundant due to no fear in going to hell or some sort of divine retribution. Atheism is a direct result of religion so the numbers associating it with crimes committed by the religious are irrelevant because of this and should be just as irrelevant in court.
Religion is based off of fundamental principle it's not something that cannot exist. The lowest common denominator would be the grouping of tribes and the preservation of the group. It equally ascribes everyone as being of the same sentiment just with differing interpretations
Was The Founder Of Islam A Paedophile?
Was The Founder Of Islam A Paedophile?
Glaswegian;1333111 wrote: I take it you mean that Saint Maurice underwent this metamorphosis at the hands of European artists - in the same way that Jesus went from being a Semite to a Caucasian.
If Hollywood film-makers are to be believed then Jesus hailed from Sweden.
But who can blame them? For all we know, Jesus may have been a Mongolian hunchback with bulging eyes.
That's unlikely although silk was traded with the chinese so he may have seen a chinaman. That he had blue eyes also seems highly unlikely.
Actually I don't think religion will bring peace to theb wold so whether islam is a religion od peace or not is irrelevant. What will bring peace perhaps will be when people no longer need religion to tell them what to think and how to behave. The world becomes secular in other words. That might not bring peace either but al least people will be killing each other for logical reasons - like I want your oil and other resources - and without pretending there is a nobler purpose or that god is on your side.
If Hollywood film-makers are to be believed then Jesus hailed from Sweden.
But who can blame them? For all we know, Jesus may have been a Mongolian hunchback with bulging eyes.
That's unlikely although silk was traded with the chinese so he may have seen a chinaman. That he had blue eyes also seems highly unlikely.
Actually I don't think religion will bring peace to theb wold so whether islam is a religion od peace or not is irrelevant. What will bring peace perhaps will be when people no longer need religion to tell them what to think and how to behave. The world becomes secular in other words. That might not bring peace either but al least people will be killing each other for logical reasons - like I want your oil and other resources - and without pretending there is a nobler purpose or that god is on your side.
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Glaswegian
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Was The Founder Of Islam A Paedophile?
Glaswegian;1333111 wrote: For all we know, Jesus may have been a Mongolian hunchback with bulging eyes.
Or was that his mother?
THE VIRGIN MARY - WITH CHILD?
Mary’s pregnancy was highly unusual according to Christians
~o0o~
Or was that his mother?
THE VIRGIN MARY - WITH CHILD?
Mary’s pregnancy was highly unusual according to Christians
~o0o~
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Glaswegian
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- Joined: Tue Nov 14, 2006 6:07 am
Was The Founder Of Islam A Paedophile?
fuzzywuzzy;1332151 wrote:
This thread interests me not because of the content but the rush to hush it over.
Glaswegian wrote: Paedophilia thrives on silence, fuzzy. For example, paedophile priests flourish within the Catholic Church because so many within this institution - from top to bottom - prefer to keep quiet about it. By doing so, they are colluding with their paedophilic brethren.
PAEDOPHILIA IN THE CATHOLIC CHURCH
The American writer Sam Harris has described the Catholic Church as an ‘institution which has produced and sheltered an elite army of child molesters’. The scale of the sexual abuse of children carried out by the ‘holy men’ of the Catholic Church is shocking beyond words. Here are some figures on this sexual abuse reported by the English writer, Geoff Simons:
‘In the United States over the last sixty years some 4,400 Catholic priests have been credibly accused of sexually attacking some 11,000 minors, with 90 percent of the attacks being directly genital. By the summer of 2004 some $700 million had been paid to victims’ families, and that did not count legal costs. We can judge that the sexual abuse of children in the United States has cost the Roman Catholic Church more than $1 billion. And the practice is common in other countries. In recent years some 120 priests in Britain have been investigated for the abuse of minors, leading so far to twenty-one convictions; in France twenty priests have been convicted of rape and molestation of children; in Ireland 150 priests were convicted; and there were similar cases in Italy, Austria, Spain, Mexico, Australia, Canada and parts of Africa.’ From Time To Be Rational (2009) by Geoff Simons p. 216
Christopher Hitchens has commented on the sexual abuse of children by the Catholic Church as follows:
‘“Child abuse” is really a silly and pathetic euphemism for what has been going on: we are talking about the systematic rape of children, positively aided and abetted by a hierarchy which knowingly moved the grossest offenders to parishes where they would be safer. Given what has come to light in modern times, one can only shudder to think what was happening in the centuries where the church was above all criticism.’
This thread interests me not because of the content but the rush to hush it over.
Glaswegian wrote: Paedophilia thrives on silence, fuzzy. For example, paedophile priests flourish within the Catholic Church because so many within this institution - from top to bottom - prefer to keep quiet about it. By doing so, they are colluding with their paedophilic brethren.
PAEDOPHILIA IN THE CATHOLIC CHURCH
The American writer Sam Harris has described the Catholic Church as an ‘institution which has produced and sheltered an elite army of child molesters’. The scale of the sexual abuse of children carried out by the ‘holy men’ of the Catholic Church is shocking beyond words. Here are some figures on this sexual abuse reported by the English writer, Geoff Simons:
‘In the United States over the last sixty years some 4,400 Catholic priests have been credibly accused of sexually attacking some 11,000 minors, with 90 percent of the attacks being directly genital. By the summer of 2004 some $700 million had been paid to victims’ families, and that did not count legal costs. We can judge that the sexual abuse of children in the United States has cost the Roman Catholic Church more than $1 billion. And the practice is common in other countries. In recent years some 120 priests in Britain have been investigated for the abuse of minors, leading so far to twenty-one convictions; in France twenty priests have been convicted of rape and molestation of children; in Ireland 150 priests were convicted; and there were similar cases in Italy, Austria, Spain, Mexico, Australia, Canada and parts of Africa.’ From Time To Be Rational (2009) by Geoff Simons p. 216
Christopher Hitchens has commented on the sexual abuse of children by the Catholic Church as follows:
‘“Child abuse” is really a silly and pathetic euphemism for what has been going on: we are talking about the systematic rape of children, positively aided and abetted by a hierarchy which knowingly moved the grossest offenders to parishes where they would be safer. Given what has come to light in modern times, one can only shudder to think what was happening in the centuries where the church was above all criticism.’
Was The Founder Of Islam A Paedophile?
Glaswegian;1333132 wrote: PAEDOPHILIA IN THE CATHOLIC CHURCH
The American writer Sam Harris has described the Catholic Church as an ‘institution which has produced and sheltered an elite army of child molesters’. The scale of the sexual abuse of children carried out by the ‘holy men’ of the Catholic Church is shocking beyond words. Here are some figures on this sexual abuse reported by the English writer, Geoff Simons:
‘In the United States over the last sixty years some 4,400 Catholic priests have been credibly accused of sexually attacking some 11,000 minors, with 90 percent of the attacks being directly genital. By the summer of 2004 some $700 million had been paid to victims’ families, and that did not count legal costs. We can judge that the sexual abuse of children in the United States has cost the Roman Catholic Church more than $1 billion. And the practice is common in other countries. In recent years some 120 priests in Britain have been investigated for the abuse of minors, leading so far to twenty-one convictions; in France twenty priests have been convicted of rape and molestation of children; in Ireland 150 priests were convicted; and there were similar cases in Italy, Austria, Spain, Mexico, Australia, Canada and parts of Africa.’ From Time To Be Rational by Geoff Simons p. 216
Christopher Hitchens has commented on the sexual abuse of children by the Catholic Church as follows:
‘“Child abuse is really a silly and pathetic euphemism for what has been going on: we are talking about the systematic rape of children, positively aided and abetted by a hierarchy which knowingly moved the grossest offenders to parishes where they would be safer. Given what has come to light in modern times, one can only shudder to think what was happening in the centuries where the church was above all criticism.’
And you feel that religion is the primary motivating factor?
Let's say, hypothetically speaking, there was no religion...
The statistics are shocking
* 1 in 4 girls is sexually abused before the age of 18. (96)
* 1 in 6 boys is sexually abused before the age of 18. (96)
* 1 in 5 children are solicited sexually while on the internet. (30, 87)
* Nearly 70% of all reported sexual assaults (including assaults on adults) occur to children ages 17 and under. (76)
* An estimated 39 million survivors of childhood sexual abuse exist in America today. (1)
Even within the walls of their own homes, children are at risk for sexual abuse
* 30-40% of victims are abused by a family member. (2, 44, 76)
* Another 50% are abused by someone outside of the family whom they know and trust.
* Approximately 40% are abused by older or larger children whom they know. (1, 44)
* Therefore, only 10% are abused by strangers. Statistics, Prevalence and Consequences of Child Sexual Abuse
I think the numbers in America would suffice enough to prove my point considering the overwhelming unGodliness portrayed in your quoted post.
As part of a lawsuit against Phelps and the Boy Scouts of America, the Stewarts' attorney, Tim Kosnoff, got an unprecedented look inside thousands of secret files through 2005.
"I was blown away," Kosnoff said. "It was staggering."
Kosnoff analyzed the numbers and came to this shocking conclusion: Before 1991, "a Scout leader was being tossed out for child molestation at the rate of one every three days," he said. "Post-1991, the rate was one every two days." That includes people suspected of abuse. Boy Scouts Lawsuit Opens Secret Files - CBS Evening News - CBS News
Even as you say...
In antiquity, pederasty was seen as an educational institution for the inculcation of moral and cultural values by the older man to the younger,[9] as well as a form of sexual expression. It entered representation in history from the Archaic period onwards in Ancient Greece, though Cretan ritual objects reflected an already formalized practice date to the late Minoan civilization, around 1650 BC.[10] According to Plato,[11] in ancient Greece, pederasty was a relationship and bond – whether sexual or chaste – between an adult man and an adolescent boy outside his immediate family. While most Greek men engaged in sexual relations with both women and boys,[12] exceptions to the rule were known, some avoiding relations with women, and others rejecting relations with boys. In Rome, relations with boys took a more informal and less civic path, with older men either taking advantage of dominant social status to extract sexual favors from their social inferiors, or carrying on illicit relationships with freeborn boys.[13]
Judaism and Christianity condemned sodomy (while defining that term variously, but including relations between males). Islam also prohibited the practice.
Within this blanket condemnation of sodomy, pederasty in particular was a target. The second-century preacher Clement of Alexandria used divine pederasty as an indictment of Greek religion and the mythological figures of Herakles, Apollo, Poseidon, Laius, and Zeus: "For your gods did not abstain even from boys. One loved Hylas, another Hyacinthus, another Pelops, another Chrysippus, another Ganymedes. These are the gods your wives are to worship!" Pederasty - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The American writer Sam Harris has described the Catholic Church as an ‘institution which has produced and sheltered an elite army of child molesters’. The scale of the sexual abuse of children carried out by the ‘holy men’ of the Catholic Church is shocking beyond words. Here are some figures on this sexual abuse reported by the English writer, Geoff Simons:
‘In the United States over the last sixty years some 4,400 Catholic priests have been credibly accused of sexually attacking some 11,000 minors, with 90 percent of the attacks being directly genital. By the summer of 2004 some $700 million had been paid to victims’ families, and that did not count legal costs. We can judge that the sexual abuse of children in the United States has cost the Roman Catholic Church more than $1 billion. And the practice is common in other countries. In recent years some 120 priests in Britain have been investigated for the abuse of minors, leading so far to twenty-one convictions; in France twenty priests have been convicted of rape and molestation of children; in Ireland 150 priests were convicted; and there were similar cases in Italy, Austria, Spain, Mexico, Australia, Canada and parts of Africa.’ From Time To Be Rational by Geoff Simons p. 216
Christopher Hitchens has commented on the sexual abuse of children by the Catholic Church as follows:
‘“Child abuse is really a silly and pathetic euphemism for what has been going on: we are talking about the systematic rape of children, positively aided and abetted by a hierarchy which knowingly moved the grossest offenders to parishes where they would be safer. Given what has come to light in modern times, one can only shudder to think what was happening in the centuries where the church was above all criticism.’
And you feel that religion is the primary motivating factor?
Let's say, hypothetically speaking, there was no religion...
The statistics are shocking
* 1 in 4 girls is sexually abused before the age of 18. (96)
* 1 in 6 boys is sexually abused before the age of 18. (96)
* 1 in 5 children are solicited sexually while on the internet. (30, 87)
* Nearly 70% of all reported sexual assaults (including assaults on adults) occur to children ages 17 and under. (76)
* An estimated 39 million survivors of childhood sexual abuse exist in America today. (1)
Even within the walls of their own homes, children are at risk for sexual abuse
* 30-40% of victims are abused by a family member. (2, 44, 76)
* Another 50% are abused by someone outside of the family whom they know and trust.
* Approximately 40% are abused by older or larger children whom they know. (1, 44)
* Therefore, only 10% are abused by strangers. Statistics, Prevalence and Consequences of Child Sexual Abuse
I think the numbers in America would suffice enough to prove my point considering the overwhelming unGodliness portrayed in your quoted post.
As part of a lawsuit against Phelps and the Boy Scouts of America, the Stewarts' attorney, Tim Kosnoff, got an unprecedented look inside thousands of secret files through 2005.
"I was blown away," Kosnoff said. "It was staggering."
Kosnoff analyzed the numbers and came to this shocking conclusion: Before 1991, "a Scout leader was being tossed out for child molestation at the rate of one every three days," he said. "Post-1991, the rate was one every two days." That includes people suspected of abuse. Boy Scouts Lawsuit Opens Secret Files - CBS Evening News - CBS News
Even as you say...
In antiquity, pederasty was seen as an educational institution for the inculcation of moral and cultural values by the older man to the younger,[9] as well as a form of sexual expression. It entered representation in history from the Archaic period onwards in Ancient Greece, though Cretan ritual objects reflected an already formalized practice date to the late Minoan civilization, around 1650 BC.[10] According to Plato,[11] in ancient Greece, pederasty was a relationship and bond – whether sexual or chaste – between an adult man and an adolescent boy outside his immediate family. While most Greek men engaged in sexual relations with both women and boys,[12] exceptions to the rule were known, some avoiding relations with women, and others rejecting relations with boys. In Rome, relations with boys took a more informal and less civic path, with older men either taking advantage of dominant social status to extract sexual favors from their social inferiors, or carrying on illicit relationships with freeborn boys.[13]
Judaism and Christianity condemned sodomy (while defining that term variously, but including relations between males). Islam also prohibited the practice.
Within this blanket condemnation of sodomy, pederasty in particular was a target. The second-century preacher Clement of Alexandria used divine pederasty as an indictment of Greek religion and the mythological figures of Herakles, Apollo, Poseidon, Laius, and Zeus: "For your gods did not abstain even from boys. One loved Hylas, another Hyacinthus, another Pelops, another Chrysippus, another Ganymedes. These are the gods your wives are to worship!" Pederasty - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Was The Founder Of Islam A Paedophile?
If it's easy to suggest that these creeps enter into professions in order to increase their interactions with children why then can we not suggest the same when it comes to religion? "We're all" happy to suggest that the bible is the biggest selling book in the World but when it comes to child molestation "we're" just as happy to nullify religion's business label. Somehow now these creeps are divinely the very name of religion? Not even governments have a 0% spy/defect rate...
What would it take to convince anyone that no matter the teachings of religion these crimes would still be prevalent due to the fact that religion is a product of society and not a society being the product of religion? That's what it is ya know
What would it take to convince anyone that no matter the teachings of religion these crimes would still be prevalent due to the fact that religion is a product of society and not a society being the product of religion? That's what it is ya know
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Glaswegian
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- Joined: Tue Nov 14, 2006 6:07 am
Was The Founder Of Islam A Paedophile?
Glaswegian;1333132 wrote: PAEDOPHILIA IN THE CATHOLIC CHURCH
The American writer Sam Harris has described the Catholic Church as an ‘institution which has produced and sheltered an elite army of child molesters’. The scale of the sexual abuse of children carried out by the ‘holy men’ of the Catholic Church is shocking beyond words. Here are some figures on this sexual abuse reported by the English writer, Geoff Simons:
‘In the United States over the last sixty years some 4,400 Catholic priests have been credibly accused of sexually attacking some 11,000 minors, with 90 percent of the attacks being directly genital. By the summer of 2004 some $700 million had been paid to victims’ families, and that did not count legal costs. We can judge that the sexual abuse of children in the United States has cost the Roman Catholic Church more than $1 billion. And the practice is common in other countries. In recent years some 120 priests in Britain have been investigated for the abuse of minors, leading so far to twenty-one convictions; in France twenty priests have been convicted of rape and molestation of children; in Ireland 150 priests were convicted; and there were similar cases in Italy, Austria, Spain, Mexico, Australia, Canada and parts of Africa.’ From Time To Be Rational (2009) by Geoff Simons p. 216
Christopher Hitchens has commented on the sexual abuse of children by the Catholic Church as follows:
‘“Child abuse is really a silly and pathetic euphemism for what has been going on: we are talking about the systematic rape of children, positively aided and abetted by a hierarchy which knowingly moved the grossest offenders to parishes where they would be safer. Given what has come to light in modern times, one can only shudder to think what was happening in the centuries where the church was above all criticism.’
K.Snyder wrote: And you feel that religion is the primary motivating factor?
The sexual abuse of children is a complex phenomenon and, as such, a range of factors will conspire to produce it, K. That said, I think religion is a factor which must be taken into account when trying to make sense of the extraordinarily high levels of child sexual abuse carried out by Catholic priests.
Given the morbid and angst-ridden attitude towards sex which has characterised the Christian religion throughout its history, it should come as no surprise that the most powerful Christian church on earth - the Catholic Church - is an institution which wallows in sexual repression. For example, the ideology of the Catholic Church demands lifelong celibacy by its priests. But this demand for the complete and permanent suppression of the sex instinct is something which many priests find impossible to fulfil. And this instinct will out - one way or another. Do not doubt it.
But why are so many Catholic priests channelling this instinct into the sexual abuse of children? I think another piece of Catholic ideology may help to explain this: namely, the Catholic Church’s historical fear and hatred of Woman as being ‘the gateway to the Devil’. For centuries, the Catholic Church has exhorted its priests to regard women as ‘wicked temptresses’ who are to be avoided as much as possible because they are particularly dangerous to the ‘salvation of the soul‘. If a grown man who is gullible, superstitious and sexually repressed is exposed to a pernicious doctrine like this for long enough then he may start to look upon children, especially young boys, as a relatively safer and more alluring means of satisfying his sexual needs.
The American writer Sam Harris has described the Catholic Church as an ‘institution which has produced and sheltered an elite army of child molesters’. The scale of the sexual abuse of children carried out by the ‘holy men’ of the Catholic Church is shocking beyond words. Here are some figures on this sexual abuse reported by the English writer, Geoff Simons:
‘In the United States over the last sixty years some 4,400 Catholic priests have been credibly accused of sexually attacking some 11,000 minors, with 90 percent of the attacks being directly genital. By the summer of 2004 some $700 million had been paid to victims’ families, and that did not count legal costs. We can judge that the sexual abuse of children in the United States has cost the Roman Catholic Church more than $1 billion. And the practice is common in other countries. In recent years some 120 priests in Britain have been investigated for the abuse of minors, leading so far to twenty-one convictions; in France twenty priests have been convicted of rape and molestation of children; in Ireland 150 priests were convicted; and there were similar cases in Italy, Austria, Spain, Mexico, Australia, Canada and parts of Africa.’ From Time To Be Rational (2009) by Geoff Simons p. 216
Christopher Hitchens has commented on the sexual abuse of children by the Catholic Church as follows:
‘“Child abuse is really a silly and pathetic euphemism for what has been going on: we are talking about the systematic rape of children, positively aided and abetted by a hierarchy which knowingly moved the grossest offenders to parishes where they would be safer. Given what has come to light in modern times, one can only shudder to think what was happening in the centuries where the church was above all criticism.’
K.Snyder wrote: And you feel that religion is the primary motivating factor?
The sexual abuse of children is a complex phenomenon and, as such, a range of factors will conspire to produce it, K. That said, I think religion is a factor which must be taken into account when trying to make sense of the extraordinarily high levels of child sexual abuse carried out by Catholic priests.
Given the morbid and angst-ridden attitude towards sex which has characterised the Christian religion throughout its history, it should come as no surprise that the most powerful Christian church on earth - the Catholic Church - is an institution which wallows in sexual repression. For example, the ideology of the Catholic Church demands lifelong celibacy by its priests. But this demand for the complete and permanent suppression of the sex instinct is something which many priests find impossible to fulfil. And this instinct will out - one way or another. Do not doubt it.
But why are so many Catholic priests channelling this instinct into the sexual abuse of children? I think another piece of Catholic ideology may help to explain this: namely, the Catholic Church’s historical fear and hatred of Woman as being ‘the gateway to the Devil’. For centuries, the Catholic Church has exhorted its priests to regard women as ‘wicked temptresses’ who are to be avoided as much as possible because they are particularly dangerous to the ‘salvation of the soul‘. If a grown man who is gullible, superstitious and sexually repressed is exposed to a pernicious doctrine like this for long enough then he may start to look upon children, especially young boys, as a relatively safer and more alluring means of satisfying his sexual needs.
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Glaswegian
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- Joined: Tue Nov 14, 2006 6:07 am
Was The Founder Of Islam A Paedophile?
Bryn Mawr wrote: I pretend nothing of the sort. Certainly a thread wanders – you start a thread and begin by discussing the subject in the thread title and that discussion throws up side issues that also get discussed.
And this is precisely what I have been doing, Bryn - discussing the subject in the thread title along with the side issues thrown up by it. The side issues have proliferated, haven't they? Nevertheless, I have found them fascinating. And I hope you have too.
Bryn Mawr wrote: However, in this case you start with a title and ask the question with no intention of discussing the subject raised. The linking of the original question to paedophilia within the current day Catholic Church backed up by the most bigoted commentary you could find proves that.
The ‘most bigoted commentary’ I could find? My comments on the paedophilic depravity of the Catholic Church’s priests are wholly warranted - and anyone who does not have an emotional investment in this vile institution and its preposterous teachings will readily acknowledge this.
Regarding my linking the original question to paedophilia within the current day Catholic Church, that link is extremely pertinent. The Catholic Church is bound to feature in any discussion of paedophilia nowadays since, as was noted earlier in the thread, it is an ‘institution which has produced and sheltered an elite army of child molesters’. To think that the Catholic Church won’t come up sooner or later in this kind of discussion is naïve in the extreme. Perhaps you would have been happier if the thread was given the title - Should Muhammad And Catholic Priests Be Regarded As Paedophiles For Having Sex With Children? Perhaps if you had been explicitly forewarned in this way you would be less freaked out by the discussion.
Bryn Mawr wrote: Your thread title was not chosen to stimulate discussion but to generate argument – a big difference.
The thread title was chosen to stimulate discussion, and I would say that it has been successful in this respect. After all, is this not what we two are having just now - a stimulating discussion?
Bryn Mawr wrote: By considering the actions of a person within the framework of the time and place in which he lived it is possible to make a judgement about the morality of those actions. By considering those actions purely in terms of current morality it is not possible to do so.
The only way you can possibly claim that the current set of moral values that you adhere to are absolute and unvarying, which is what you are saying by the arguments you have put forward, is by claiming that they are God given. Anything short of that and you are saying that all people of all ages must live by your moral code – who are you trying to kid?
For example, amongst the Aztecs it was their firm religious belief that the Gods must be propitiated by human sacrifice. The chief priest of the Aztecs was involved in carrying out hundreds of such sacrifices.
Would you condemn him as immoral for not cutting the bonds of those sacrifices and releasing them? Do you imagine that he would have live for five minutes after the first time he tried?
We might condemn the culture as immoral according to our values but we can hardly condemn the chief priest for his actions.
You have said some interesting things here. I will get back to you on them as soon as I can.
Glaswegian wrote: I said that I hoped your bleating about this thread isn’t born of moral cowardice. So tell me: is it? I mean, you aren’t worried about it incurring anyone’s wrath. Right?
You have said that the title of this thread is offensive. This means that you must have some idea in your mind about who it causes offence to. Would you care to identify who this is?
Bryn Mawr wrote: As I thought, an attempt to insinuate that I am without the justification to do so.
So in answer to your silly little barb – why should I worry about it incurring anybodies wrath, it's not my title and yes, I'll identify who it has caused offence to – ME.
I'll get back to you on this as well.
And this is precisely what I have been doing, Bryn - discussing the subject in the thread title along with the side issues thrown up by it. The side issues have proliferated, haven't they? Nevertheless, I have found them fascinating. And I hope you have too.
Bryn Mawr wrote: However, in this case you start with a title and ask the question with no intention of discussing the subject raised. The linking of the original question to paedophilia within the current day Catholic Church backed up by the most bigoted commentary you could find proves that.
The ‘most bigoted commentary’ I could find? My comments on the paedophilic depravity of the Catholic Church’s priests are wholly warranted - and anyone who does not have an emotional investment in this vile institution and its preposterous teachings will readily acknowledge this.
Regarding my linking the original question to paedophilia within the current day Catholic Church, that link is extremely pertinent. The Catholic Church is bound to feature in any discussion of paedophilia nowadays since, as was noted earlier in the thread, it is an ‘institution which has produced and sheltered an elite army of child molesters’. To think that the Catholic Church won’t come up sooner or later in this kind of discussion is naïve in the extreme. Perhaps you would have been happier if the thread was given the title - Should Muhammad And Catholic Priests Be Regarded As Paedophiles For Having Sex With Children? Perhaps if you had been explicitly forewarned in this way you would be less freaked out by the discussion.
Bryn Mawr wrote: Your thread title was not chosen to stimulate discussion but to generate argument – a big difference.
The thread title was chosen to stimulate discussion, and I would say that it has been successful in this respect. After all, is this not what we two are having just now - a stimulating discussion?
Bryn Mawr wrote: By considering the actions of a person within the framework of the time and place in which he lived it is possible to make a judgement about the morality of those actions. By considering those actions purely in terms of current morality it is not possible to do so.
The only way you can possibly claim that the current set of moral values that you adhere to are absolute and unvarying, which is what you are saying by the arguments you have put forward, is by claiming that they are God given. Anything short of that and you are saying that all people of all ages must live by your moral code – who are you trying to kid?
For example, amongst the Aztecs it was their firm religious belief that the Gods must be propitiated by human sacrifice. The chief priest of the Aztecs was involved in carrying out hundreds of such sacrifices.
Would you condemn him as immoral for not cutting the bonds of those sacrifices and releasing them? Do you imagine that he would have live for five minutes after the first time he tried?
We might condemn the culture as immoral according to our values but we can hardly condemn the chief priest for his actions.
You have said some interesting things here. I will get back to you on them as soon as I can.
Glaswegian wrote: I said that I hoped your bleating about this thread isn’t born of moral cowardice. So tell me: is it? I mean, you aren’t worried about it incurring anyone’s wrath. Right?
You have said that the title of this thread is offensive. This means that you must have some idea in your mind about who it causes offence to. Would you care to identify who this is?
Bryn Mawr wrote: As I thought, an attempt to insinuate that I am without the justification to do so.
So in answer to your silly little barb – why should I worry about it incurring anybodies wrath, it's not my title and yes, I'll identify who it has caused offence to – ME.
I'll get back to you on this as well.
Was The Founder Of Islam A Paedophile?
Glaswegian;1335289 wrote: The sexual abuse of children is a complex phenomenon and, as such, a range of factors will conspire to produce it, K. That said, I think religion is a factor which must be taken into account when trying to make sense of the extraordinarily high levels of child sexual abuse carried out by Catholic priests.
Given the morbid and angst-ridden attitude towards sex which has characterised the Christian religion throughout its history, it should come as no surprise that the most powerful Christian church on earth - the Catholic Church - is an institution which wallows in sexual repression. For example, the ideology of the Catholic Church demands lifelong celibacy by its priests. But this demand for the complete and permanent suppression of the sex instinct is something which many priests find impossible to fulfil. And this instinct will out - one way or another. Do not doubt it.
But why are so many Catholic priests channelling this instinct into the sexual abuse of children? I think another piece of Catholic ideology may help to explain this: namely, the Catholic Church’s historical fear and hatred of Woman as being ‘the gateway to the Devil’. For centuries, the Catholic Church has exhorted its priests to regard women as ‘wicked temptresses’ who are to be avoided as much as possible because they are particularly dangerous to the ‘salvation of the soul‘. If a grown man who is gullible, superstitious and sexually repressed is exposed to a pernicious doctrine like this for long enough then he may start to look upon children, especially young boys, as a relatively safer and more alluring means of satisfying his sexual needs.We agree that religion increases the likelihood of child molestation that much is certain. What I would like to throw about is the possibility that some of these numbers are ambiguous to the idea that some enter into religion because of this increase and not because they revert their sexual desires. It's evident that this has unfortunately been prevalent in all societies so why should we expect that the religious society has less offenders only to say that otherwise good natured people become sexual predators? I don't buy that. People enter into religious "professions" because it's not only easy to hide but also serves to increase their encounters with little boys, or girls, just that as you say the boys tend to not talk due to embarrassment which I can honestly say I don't know of anything more cruel and evil.
The numbers don't lie. Child abuse is more prevalent than most of the public realize and religion is the media craze.
Given the morbid and angst-ridden attitude towards sex which has characterised the Christian religion throughout its history, it should come as no surprise that the most powerful Christian church on earth - the Catholic Church - is an institution which wallows in sexual repression. For example, the ideology of the Catholic Church demands lifelong celibacy by its priests. But this demand for the complete and permanent suppression of the sex instinct is something which many priests find impossible to fulfil. And this instinct will out - one way or another. Do not doubt it.
But why are so many Catholic priests channelling this instinct into the sexual abuse of children? I think another piece of Catholic ideology may help to explain this: namely, the Catholic Church’s historical fear and hatred of Woman as being ‘the gateway to the Devil’. For centuries, the Catholic Church has exhorted its priests to regard women as ‘wicked temptresses’ who are to be avoided as much as possible because they are particularly dangerous to the ‘salvation of the soul‘. If a grown man who is gullible, superstitious and sexually repressed is exposed to a pernicious doctrine like this for long enough then he may start to look upon children, especially young boys, as a relatively safer and more alluring means of satisfying his sexual needs.We agree that religion increases the likelihood of child molestation that much is certain. What I would like to throw about is the possibility that some of these numbers are ambiguous to the idea that some enter into religion because of this increase and not because they revert their sexual desires. It's evident that this has unfortunately been prevalent in all societies so why should we expect that the religious society has less offenders only to say that otherwise good natured people become sexual predators? I don't buy that. People enter into religious "professions" because it's not only easy to hide but also serves to increase their encounters with little boys, or girls, just that as you say the boys tend to not talk due to embarrassment which I can honestly say I don't know of anything more cruel and evil.
The numbers don't lie. Child abuse is more prevalent than most of the public realize and religion is the media craze.
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Glaswegian
- Posts: 733
- Joined: Tue Nov 14, 2006 6:07 am
Was The Founder Of Islam A Paedophile?
Bryn Mawr wrote: By considering the actions of a person within the framework of the time and place in which he lived it is possible to make a judgement about the morality of those actions. By considering those actions purely in terms of current morality it is not possible to do so.
Let’s apply the line of reasoning which underpins the above argument to a real life case - the trial of Adolf Eichmann.
In 1961 the Israelis put Adolf Eichmann on trial in Jerusalem for war crimes. Eichmann’s defence in this trial was that he was merely following orders, which is to say, he was merely following the moral code and practices of a political regime which held that it was the moral duty of the Aryan race to eliminate the Jews from the face of the earth. Thus, Eichmann was essentially claiming that he was acting in accordance with the cultural norms which held sway in Nazi Germany between 1933 and 1945, and doing what every patriotic German was expected to do.
Now according to your line of reasoning, Bryn, the Israelis should not have put Eichmann on trial. Why? Because they were judging a man whose actions were performed within the moral and cultural context of Nazi Germany, and they were making their judgement from within the very different moral and cultural context which obtained in Israel in 1961. If the Israelis had done what you advocated above - namely, considered the actions of Eichmann within the framework of the time and place in which he lived (i.e., Nazi Germany) - then they would have had to take their hats off to the man in recognition of the remarkable skill with which he expedited the Final Solution. Maybe they should have arranged a fling for him with Shelley Winters instead of hanging him?
Bryn Mawr wrote: The only way you can possibly claim that the current set of moral values that you adhere to are absolute and unvarying, which is what you are saying by the arguments you have put forward, is by claiming that they are God given.
If you had taken the time to read a response I made to spot earlier in this thread then you would know that I do not regard the set of moral values I adhere to as absolute and unvarying.
Viz.
spot wrote: No moral value system remains constant.
Glaswegian wrote: I know. This is why Jews, for example, no longer stone women to death for adultery.
That is perfectly clear.
Bryn Mawr wrote: Anything short of that and you are saying that all people of all ages must live by your moral code – who are you trying to kid?
What you have shown by this remark is that your moral imagination is extremely limited. I would never dream of saying that all people of all ages must live by my moral code. For that would be tantamount to saying that my moral code is the best that can possibly be achieved. And I know that it isn’t. But neither is yours nor anyone else’s who is alive right now or who has lived before us.
I firmly believe that all moral codes, past and present, can be improved upon - yours and mine included. This is why I can imagine people in, say, fifty years or a hundred years or a thousand years living by moral codes which are superior to mine and yours and those of our contemporaries. Although you might be incapable of imagining this scenario in which moral codes are continually improved upon and refined by individuals who live in future ages, let me assure you that such a thing is not beyond the bounds of all possibility and the power of human beings to accomplish.
Consider this:
My moral code and your moral code are better than Muhammad's. For example, we don't fu*k little children. Right? So you see - moral codes can be improved upon.
Bryn Mawr wrote: For example, amongst the Aztecs it was their firm religious belief that the Gods must be propitiated by human sacrifice. The chief priest of the Aztecs was involved in carrying out hundreds of such sacrifices.
Would you condemn him as immoral for not cutting the bonds of those sacrifices and releasing them? Do you imagine that he would have live for five minutes after the first time he tried?
There are certain conditions under which life is not worth living. This is something which the moral coward refuses to face up to for he wants to cling to life at any cost. Human beings are not simply at the mercy of cultural norms. In the last analysis, they are free to act. Which means they can choose to disobey cultural norms. It is possible to act nobly even with a gun placed against one’s head.
The chief priest in your example could have refused to cut out the hearts of his living victims even if this resulted in death for himself. But for you it was okay for him to continue doing what he was doing. And this particular religionist was killing thousands, wasn’t he? As I said, there are certain conditions under which life is not worth living. And that butcher's job fits the bill. For me, anyway.
Bryn Mawr wrote: We might condemn the culture as immoral according to our values but we can hardly condemn the chief priest for his actions.
In order to bring out the foolishness which underlies your whole argument let’s apply this sentence of yours to the case of Adolph Hitler.
mutatis mutandis…
We might condemn the culture of Nazism as immoral according to our values but we can hardly condemn the chief mastermind of the Holocaust for his actions.
Yeah. Whisper it soothingly into the ovens at Dachau.
Let’s apply the line of reasoning which underpins the above argument to a real life case - the trial of Adolf Eichmann.
In 1961 the Israelis put Adolf Eichmann on trial in Jerusalem for war crimes. Eichmann’s defence in this trial was that he was merely following orders, which is to say, he was merely following the moral code and practices of a political regime which held that it was the moral duty of the Aryan race to eliminate the Jews from the face of the earth. Thus, Eichmann was essentially claiming that he was acting in accordance with the cultural norms which held sway in Nazi Germany between 1933 and 1945, and doing what every patriotic German was expected to do.
Now according to your line of reasoning, Bryn, the Israelis should not have put Eichmann on trial. Why? Because they were judging a man whose actions were performed within the moral and cultural context of Nazi Germany, and they were making their judgement from within the very different moral and cultural context which obtained in Israel in 1961. If the Israelis had done what you advocated above - namely, considered the actions of Eichmann within the framework of the time and place in which he lived (i.e., Nazi Germany) - then they would have had to take their hats off to the man in recognition of the remarkable skill with which he expedited the Final Solution. Maybe they should have arranged a fling for him with Shelley Winters instead of hanging him?
Bryn Mawr wrote: The only way you can possibly claim that the current set of moral values that you adhere to are absolute and unvarying, which is what you are saying by the arguments you have put forward, is by claiming that they are God given.
If you had taken the time to read a response I made to spot earlier in this thread then you would know that I do not regard the set of moral values I adhere to as absolute and unvarying.
Viz.
spot wrote: No moral value system remains constant.
Glaswegian wrote: I know. This is why Jews, for example, no longer stone women to death for adultery.
That is perfectly clear.
Bryn Mawr wrote: Anything short of that and you are saying that all people of all ages must live by your moral code – who are you trying to kid?
What you have shown by this remark is that your moral imagination is extremely limited. I would never dream of saying that all people of all ages must live by my moral code. For that would be tantamount to saying that my moral code is the best that can possibly be achieved. And I know that it isn’t. But neither is yours nor anyone else’s who is alive right now or who has lived before us.
I firmly believe that all moral codes, past and present, can be improved upon - yours and mine included. This is why I can imagine people in, say, fifty years or a hundred years or a thousand years living by moral codes which are superior to mine and yours and those of our contemporaries. Although you might be incapable of imagining this scenario in which moral codes are continually improved upon and refined by individuals who live in future ages, let me assure you that such a thing is not beyond the bounds of all possibility and the power of human beings to accomplish.
Consider this:
My moral code and your moral code are better than Muhammad's. For example, we don't fu*k little children. Right? So you see - moral codes can be improved upon.
Bryn Mawr wrote: For example, amongst the Aztecs it was their firm religious belief that the Gods must be propitiated by human sacrifice. The chief priest of the Aztecs was involved in carrying out hundreds of such sacrifices.
Would you condemn him as immoral for not cutting the bonds of those sacrifices and releasing them? Do you imagine that he would have live for five minutes after the first time he tried?
There are certain conditions under which life is not worth living. This is something which the moral coward refuses to face up to for he wants to cling to life at any cost. Human beings are not simply at the mercy of cultural norms. In the last analysis, they are free to act. Which means they can choose to disobey cultural norms. It is possible to act nobly even with a gun placed against one’s head.
The chief priest in your example could have refused to cut out the hearts of his living victims even if this resulted in death for himself. But for you it was okay for him to continue doing what he was doing. And this particular religionist was killing thousands, wasn’t he? As I said, there are certain conditions under which life is not worth living. And that butcher's job fits the bill. For me, anyway.
Bryn Mawr wrote: We might condemn the culture as immoral according to our values but we can hardly condemn the chief priest for his actions.
In order to bring out the foolishness which underlies your whole argument let’s apply this sentence of yours to the case of Adolph Hitler.
mutatis mutandis…
We might condemn the culture of Nazism as immoral according to our values but we can hardly condemn the chief mastermind of the Holocaust for his actions.
Yeah. Whisper it soothingly into the ovens at Dachau.
Was The Founder Of Islam A Paedophile?
I'll add this to the discussion: When Mohammed was young and in search of followers, he joined a band of raiders, stealing and looting caravans crossing between his old town and the new city he was living in. Eventually, he had enough followers to return and sack his old town.
That makes him a bandit and and a thief in ANY culture ever known to mankind.
That makes him a bandit and and a thief in ANY culture ever known to mankind.
Was The Founder Of Islam A Paedophile?
Glaswegian;1335609 wrote: Let’s apply the line of reasoning which underpins the above argument to a real life case - the trial of Adolf Eichmann.
In 1961 the Israelis put Adolf Eichmann on trial in Jerusalem for war crimes. Eichmann’s defence in this trial was that he was merely following orders, which is to say, he was merely following the moral code and practices of a political regime which held that it was the moral duty of the Aryan race to eliminate the Jews from the face of the earth. Thus, Eichmann was essentially claiming that he was acting in accordance with the cultural norms which held sway in Nazi Germany between 1933 and 1945, and doing what every patriotic German was expected to do.
Now according to your line of reasoning, Bryn, the Israelis should not have put Eichmann on trial. Why? Because they were judging a man whose actions were performed within the moral and cultural context of Nazi Germany, and they were making their judgement from within the very different moral and cultural context which obtained in Israel in 1961. If the Israelis had done what you advocated above - namely, considered the actions of Eichmann within the framework of the time and place in which he lived (i.e., Nazi Germany) - then they would have had to take their hats off to the man in recognition of the remarkable skill with which he expedited the Final Solution. ...
Which is exactly why we'd do everyone a favor to deal with criminals based off of what they did as opposed to why they did it without exception.
I agree on all of your points in this post.
In 1961 the Israelis put Adolf Eichmann on trial in Jerusalem for war crimes. Eichmann’s defence in this trial was that he was merely following orders, which is to say, he was merely following the moral code and practices of a political regime which held that it was the moral duty of the Aryan race to eliminate the Jews from the face of the earth. Thus, Eichmann was essentially claiming that he was acting in accordance with the cultural norms which held sway in Nazi Germany between 1933 and 1945, and doing what every patriotic German was expected to do.
Now according to your line of reasoning, Bryn, the Israelis should not have put Eichmann on trial. Why? Because they were judging a man whose actions were performed within the moral and cultural context of Nazi Germany, and they were making their judgement from within the very different moral and cultural context which obtained in Israel in 1961. If the Israelis had done what you advocated above - namely, considered the actions of Eichmann within the framework of the time and place in which he lived (i.e., Nazi Germany) - then they would have had to take their hats off to the man in recognition of the remarkable skill with which he expedited the Final Solution. ...
Which is exactly why we'd do everyone a favor to deal with criminals based off of what they did as opposed to why they did it without exception.
I agree on all of your points in this post.
Was The Founder Of Islam A Paedophile?
Saint_;1335612 wrote: I'll add this to the discussion: When Mohammed was young and in search of followers, he joined a band of raiders, stealing and looting caravans crossing between his old town and the new city he was living in. Eventually, he had enough followers to return and sack his old town.
That makes him a bandit and and a thief in ANY culture ever known to mankind.Well, I'd say that depends entirely on who occupied the city and the caravans, surely.
That makes him a bandit and and a thief in ANY culture ever known to mankind.Well, I'd say that depends entirely on who occupied the city and the caravans, surely.
Was The Founder Of Islam A Paedophile?
At the time the founder of islam was alive average life expectancy for most people was 30 or so. people were sexually active as soon as they were able for the brutally simplistic reason there wasn't a lot of time to think about it if you wanted to have a children. The concept of human rights is a relatively modern one, the first international agreement on that was made after 1945. Women and children have had a chequered history most recently, victorian times and early 20th century they were regarded as chattels of the man and as such could be disposed off in any way they wished. The notion that a woman had any right to her own property never mind her own body is also relatively new as is indeed the notion that they are capable of looking after themselves and making decisions on their own behalf, god forbid they should ever be allowed a say in politics - and god did forbid according to some. The reality was a warlord could do whatever he wanted and no one could stop him even if they thought he was wrong they accepted his authority and kept their mouths shut if they didn't. Actually come to think of it religious leaders stuill want the same - accept their authority and keep your opinions to yourself if you don't.
To apply 21st century mores to the founder of islam is absurd especially when the people of our time are still somewhat ambivalent about what rights a child has. The convention on the rights of the child was only adopted in 1990 and some countries still haven't signed up to it. It took the United states until 2005 before it was signed but they haven't yet ratified it. One of the stumbling blocks seemingly the part where it wasn't acceptable to execute children and amongst others the right to a good education - no home schooling then as they are entitled to a broad education.
Convention on the Rights of the Child - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
US ratification of the Convention on the Rights of the Child - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
To apply 21st century mores to the founder of islam is absurd especially when the people of our time are still somewhat ambivalent about it. Children tempt paedophiles so it's their fault. You get the same kind of demented reasoning behind religions groups that want to keep women covered head to toe, they tempt therefore it is their fault if they become a victim, in our culture there are many who think a woman wearing a short skirt is asking for it. It wasn't that long ago that the bible was used to justify the belief that some were less than human and had no rights at all.
To apply 21st century mores to the founder of islam and accuse him of being a paedophile is absurd. What is even more absurd is that we find ourselves even debating whether the attitudes of a stone age religion have any relevance in the 21st century. Our society moves on and people accept they are free and realise they have to accept the rights and lives of others as being of equal value whether we approve of them or not. But we have the adherents of a bronze age religion hanging round our necks always trying to turn the clock back.
To apply 21st century mores to the founder of islam is absurd especially when the people of our time are still somewhat ambivalent about what rights a child has. The convention on the rights of the child was only adopted in 1990 and some countries still haven't signed up to it. It took the United states until 2005 before it was signed but they haven't yet ratified it. One of the stumbling blocks seemingly the part where it wasn't acceptable to execute children and amongst others the right to a good education - no home schooling then as they are entitled to a broad education.
Convention on the Rights of the Child - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
US ratification of the Convention on the Rights of the Child - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
To apply 21st century mores to the founder of islam is absurd especially when the people of our time are still somewhat ambivalent about it. Children tempt paedophiles so it's their fault. You get the same kind of demented reasoning behind religions groups that want to keep women covered head to toe, they tempt therefore it is their fault if they become a victim, in our culture there are many who think a woman wearing a short skirt is asking for it. It wasn't that long ago that the bible was used to justify the belief that some were less than human and had no rights at all.
To apply 21st century mores to the founder of islam and accuse him of being a paedophile is absurd. What is even more absurd is that we find ourselves even debating whether the attitudes of a stone age religion have any relevance in the 21st century. Our society moves on and people accept they are free and realise they have to accept the rights and lives of others as being of equal value whether we approve of them or not. But we have the adherents of a bronze age religion hanging round our necks always trying to turn the clock back.
Was The Founder Of Islam A Paedophile?
I don't think you can think about the issues of child brides in history and relate them to the 21st century.
Tutankahmun married his half sister when he became king at the age of 9 and I'm sure there are plenty of other examples in history that would not be acceptable now.
I would like to say that there is far too much anti-Islamic and other 'anti-anything' stuff on Youtube these days. Much of it is fanatical and some is heavily tampered with/edited. I guess you have to be very selective in what you believe.
Tutankahmun married his half sister when he became king at the age of 9 and I'm sure there are plenty of other examples in history that would not be acceptable now.
I would like to say that there is far too much anti-Islamic and other 'anti-anything' stuff on Youtube these days. Much of it is fanatical and some is heavily tampered with/edited. I guess you have to be very selective in what you believe.
A smile is a window on your face to show your heart is home
Was The Founder Of Islam A Paedophile?
Bez;1335696 wrote: I don't think you can think about the issues of child brides in history and relate them to the 21st century.
Tutankahmun married his half sister when he became king at the age of 9 and I'm sure there are plenty of other examples in history that would not be acceptable now.
I would like to say that there is far too much anti-Islamic and other 'anti-anything' stuff on Youtube these days. Much of it is fanatical and some is heavily tampered with/edited. I guess you have to be very selective in what you believe.
I don't believe anything I can't check out for myself from other sources. Richard dawkins on his web site has a bit where he shows what actually happened at some of his talks and then shows the way it has been edited to suit what someone wanted or perceived to have happened.
Tutankahmun married his half sister when he became king at the age of 9 and I'm sure there are plenty of other examples in history that would not be acceptable now.
I would like to say that there is far too much anti-Islamic and other 'anti-anything' stuff on Youtube these days. Much of it is fanatical and some is heavily tampered with/edited. I guess you have to be very selective in what you believe.
I don't believe anything I can't check out for myself from other sources. Richard dawkins on his web site has a bit where he shows what actually happened at some of his talks and then shows the way it has been edited to suit what someone wanted or perceived to have happened.
Was The Founder Of Islam A Paedophile?
gmc;1335762 wrote: I don't believe anything I can't check out for myself from other sources. Richard dawkins on his web site has a bit where he shows what actually happened at some of his talks and then shows the way it has been edited to suit what someone wanted or perceived to have happened.
Same here.....
Same here.....
A smile is a window on your face to show your heart is home
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Glaswegian
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Was The Founder Of Islam A Paedophile?
gmc;1335657 wrote: To apply 21st century mores to the founder of islam and accuse him of being a paedophile is absurd.
Let me ask you something, gmc:
When you look at the behaviour of some of the Roman Emperors, say Caligula or Nero, I’m sure you must find it disturbing and, at times, utterly monstrous. Why is that? Is it not because you are applying 21st century mores in your assessment of their behaviour and finding it wanting in the extreme?
If it is okay to apply 21st century mores in this way to the behaviour of Caligula and Nero then why is it not okay to apply these same mores to the behaviour of Muhammad?
Let me ask you something, gmc:
When you look at the behaviour of some of the Roman Emperors, say Caligula or Nero, I’m sure you must find it disturbing and, at times, utterly monstrous. Why is that? Is it not because you are applying 21st century mores in your assessment of their behaviour and finding it wanting in the extreme?
If it is okay to apply 21st century mores in this way to the behaviour of Caligula and Nero then why is it not okay to apply these same mores to the behaviour of Muhammad?
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Clodhopper
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Was The Founder Of Islam A Paedophile?
I think this has already been covered - because Muhammed was dealing with a society which had a short life expectancy and you had to get a move on (not to mention cultural norms) whereas Nero and Caligula were killing en masse for reasons of political expediency.
The crowd: "Yes! We are all individuals!"
Lone voice: "I'm not."
Lone voice: "I'm not."
Was The Founder Of Islam A Paedophile?
Clodhopper;1335841 wrote: I think this has already been covered - because Muhammed was dealing with a society which had a short life expectancy and you had to get a move on (not to mention cultural norms) whereas Nero and Caligula were killing en masse for reasons of political expediency.In order to understand the context of "get a move on" they'd have to have a collective perspective of what an extenuated life means and that wasn't the case. The average age negates the very definition of "get a move on", it's redundant logic
No matter how you slice and dice it, physics doesn't catch up until a crucial point. When that happens sex becomes a matter of naturalism, nothing a 9 year old would possess entirely at all. Not then. Not ever
No matter how you slice and dice it, physics doesn't catch up until a crucial point. When that happens sex becomes a matter of naturalism, nothing a 9 year old would possess entirely at all. Not then. Not ever
Was The Founder Of Islam A Paedophile?
Glaswegian;1335836 wrote: Let me ask you something, gmc:
When you look at the behaviour of some of the Roman Emperors, say Caligula or Nero, I’m sure you must find it disturbing and, at times, utterly monstrous. Why is that? Is it not because you are applying 21st century mores in your assessment of their behaviour and finding it wanting in the extreme?
If it is okay to apply 21st century mores in this way to the behaviour of Caligula and Nero then why is it not okay to apply these same mores to the behaviour of Muhammad?
People at the time found it pretty monstrous as well but they also went to gladitorial games and exposed deformed or sickly children to die rather than let them live and kept slaves and subjugated people all around just as many also thought that kind of hing was wrong as well. They also believed in the concept of equality before the law and much of our ideas of government and the structure of government come from them. Caligula and nero were monsters that doesn't mean all romans now are monsters as well. any more than all muslims are monster because of what the founders of the religion did. Comared to what the contemporary popes were up to the prophet was almost civilised. What do you think of the Borgia popes? Paedophilia was not the worst of it was it? The roman empire is a fascinating study of what happens when too much power and wealth gets concentrated in the power of a few. You look at the past and learn about it so you can learn from it and it's a waste of time trying to tar people with the deeds of their ancestors. Our nation started the slave trade from afrca to the americas. Does that make us bad people now? ( OK it was really the english but who were the overeer on the plantations and who do so many descendants of slaves have scottish and irish names ) You and I live in a country forged in the white hot furmnace of religious warfafre. What would you have done in 1690? Gone to war, stayed at home and do you think you would have had a choice? In 1745 would you have been a jacobite or amongst the scottish troops that piled up the wounded at culloden and fired cannonballs in to them because you hated the teuchters.
By our lights the founder of islam was a paedophile, for his time his behaviour was not out of order. Is there some deeply significant point point you are trying to make?
When you look at the behaviour of some of the Roman Emperors, say Caligula or Nero, I’m sure you must find it disturbing and, at times, utterly monstrous. Why is that? Is it not because you are applying 21st century mores in your assessment of their behaviour and finding it wanting in the extreme?
If it is okay to apply 21st century mores in this way to the behaviour of Caligula and Nero then why is it not okay to apply these same mores to the behaviour of Muhammad?
People at the time found it pretty monstrous as well but they also went to gladitorial games and exposed deformed or sickly children to die rather than let them live and kept slaves and subjugated people all around just as many also thought that kind of hing was wrong as well. They also believed in the concept of equality before the law and much of our ideas of government and the structure of government come from them. Caligula and nero were monsters that doesn't mean all romans now are monsters as well. any more than all muslims are monster because of what the founders of the religion did. Comared to what the contemporary popes were up to the prophet was almost civilised. What do you think of the Borgia popes? Paedophilia was not the worst of it was it? The roman empire is a fascinating study of what happens when too much power and wealth gets concentrated in the power of a few. You look at the past and learn about it so you can learn from it and it's a waste of time trying to tar people with the deeds of their ancestors. Our nation started the slave trade from afrca to the americas. Does that make us bad people now? ( OK it was really the english but who were the overeer on the plantations and who do so many descendants of slaves have scottish and irish names ) You and I live in a country forged in the white hot furmnace of religious warfafre. What would you have done in 1690? Gone to war, stayed at home and do you think you would have had a choice? In 1745 would you have been a jacobite or amongst the scottish troops that piled up the wounded at culloden and fired cannonballs in to them because you hated the teuchters.
By our lights the founder of islam was a paedophile, for his time his behaviour was not out of order. Is there some deeply significant point point you are trying to make?
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Glaswegian
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Was The Founder Of Islam A Paedophile?
gmc;1335911 wrote: By our lights the founder of islam was a paedophile, for his time his behaviour was not out of order.
You say that the founder of Islam’s behaviour was not out of order for his time. This means that for you when a man in his fifties has sex with a nine year old child there is nothing wrong with this behaviour in itself, and that what determines its rightness or wrongness is simply a matter of time and place - simply a matter of moral fashion.
But this is not how our culture sees it.
If a British male in his fifties was known to have had sex with a nine year old child when he was in a foreign land then he would be arrested the moment he set foot back on this island. Likewise, if a Catholic priest in his fifties had sex with a nine year old child thirty years ago then he would be arrested the moment this became known to the authorities. And the reason why both of these individuals would be arrested is because our culture regards sex between adult males and children as behaviour that is morally wrong in itself, as behaviour that is trans-culturally abhorrent, as behaviour that is so unacceptable its immorality transcends time and place.
Now, if paedophilia is viewed in this way by our culture then it follows that this behaviour is not only morally wrong at this time and in this place. It was also morally wrong here and everywhere else last week, last year, last century, and fourteen hundred years ago when a dirty old man was having his way with a nine year old child in some fetid tent in the Arabian desert.
Thus, for our culture the rightness or wrongness of paedophilia is not a matter of moral fashion. We deem it to be universally wrong - irrespective of time and place. In other words, the moral judgement our culture has made about paedophilia is both a global and a historical one.
Maybe you will call this ‘Cultural Imperialism’. I don’t know. But this is the judgement our culture has made - as manifested in its laws.
Would you agree?
You say that the founder of Islam’s behaviour was not out of order for his time. This means that for you when a man in his fifties has sex with a nine year old child there is nothing wrong with this behaviour in itself, and that what determines its rightness or wrongness is simply a matter of time and place - simply a matter of moral fashion.
But this is not how our culture sees it.
If a British male in his fifties was known to have had sex with a nine year old child when he was in a foreign land then he would be arrested the moment he set foot back on this island. Likewise, if a Catholic priest in his fifties had sex with a nine year old child thirty years ago then he would be arrested the moment this became known to the authorities. And the reason why both of these individuals would be arrested is because our culture regards sex between adult males and children as behaviour that is morally wrong in itself, as behaviour that is trans-culturally abhorrent, as behaviour that is so unacceptable its immorality transcends time and place.
Now, if paedophilia is viewed in this way by our culture then it follows that this behaviour is not only morally wrong at this time and in this place. It was also morally wrong here and everywhere else last week, last year, last century, and fourteen hundred years ago when a dirty old man was having his way with a nine year old child in some fetid tent in the Arabian desert.
Thus, for our culture the rightness or wrongness of paedophilia is not a matter of moral fashion. We deem it to be universally wrong - irrespective of time and place. In other words, the moral judgement our culture has made about paedophilia is both a global and a historical one.
Maybe you will call this ‘Cultural Imperialism’. I don’t know. But this is the judgement our culture has made - as manifested in its laws.
Would you agree?
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Glaswegian
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Was The Founder Of Islam A Paedophile?
Glaswegian wrote: I said that I hoped your bleating about this thread isn’t born of moral cowardice. So tell me: is it? I mean, you aren’t worried about it incurring anyone’s wrath. Right?
You have said that the title of this thread is offensive. This means that you must have some idea in your mind about who it causes offence to. Would you care to identify who this is?
Bryn Mawr;1333104 wrote: As I thought, an attempt to insinuate that I am without the justification to do so.
So in answer to your silly little barb – why should I worry about it incurring anybodies wrath, it's not my title and yes, I'll identify who it has caused offence to – ME.
Your claim to be offended by the title of this thread reeks of dishonesty and pretence. It is no more convincing than the phony display of outrage put on by the Muslim pantaloons during the Muhammad Cartoons fiasco.
How deeply 'offended' you must have been by those cartoons, Bryn Mawr. You must have been sleepless at night with the 'offence' they caused you.
Instead of pretending to be offended by the title of this thread - instead of putting on a contrived and shameful act of snivelling - be offended by this:
THEO VAN GOGH
Murdered for making a film critical of Islam
~o0o~
You have said that the title of this thread is offensive. This means that you must have some idea in your mind about who it causes offence to. Would you care to identify who this is?
Bryn Mawr;1333104 wrote: As I thought, an attempt to insinuate that I am without the justification to do so.
So in answer to your silly little barb – why should I worry about it incurring anybodies wrath, it's not my title and yes, I'll identify who it has caused offence to – ME.
Your claim to be offended by the title of this thread reeks of dishonesty and pretence. It is no more convincing than the phony display of outrage put on by the Muslim pantaloons during the Muhammad Cartoons fiasco.
How deeply 'offended' you must have been by those cartoons, Bryn Mawr. You must have been sleepless at night with the 'offence' they caused you.
Instead of pretending to be offended by the title of this thread - instead of putting on a contrived and shameful act of snivelling - be offended by this:
THEO VAN GOGH
Murdered for making a film critical of Islam
~o0o~
Was The Founder Of Islam A Paedophile?
posted by glaswegian
You say that the founder of Islam’s behaviour was not out of order for his time. This means that for you when a man in his fifties has sex with a nine year old child there is nothing wrong with this behaviour in itself, and that what determines its rightness or wrongness is simply a matter of time and place - simply a matter of moral fashion.
No I said he was a man of his time. He was also a warlord who could do what he wanted, in europe at the time droit du seigneur was also commonplace. Most people would agree rape is immoral yet at various times it is quite acceptable as in, for instance, droit du seigneur, not because people didn't think it wrong but because nobody who would object could object the god given right of the local lord.
The action of a fifty year old man having sex with a nine year old id wrong in any time but the fact of the matter is the powerful can do anything they like. History is the long struggle of the weak against the powerful, believing all are equal and entitled to fair treatment is radical in any age - including our own.
Is there some deeply significant point point you are trying to make? Because if there is would you make it.
At various times people will commit an immoral act that at other tinmes would be horrifying
and what determines morality is simply a matter of time and place.
You say that the founder of Islam’s behaviour was not out of order for his time. This means that for you when a man in his fifties has sex with a nine year old child there is nothing wrong with this behaviour in itself, and that what determines its rightness or wrongness is simply a matter of time and place - simply a matter of moral fashion.
No I said he was a man of his time. He was also a warlord who could do what he wanted, in europe at the time droit du seigneur was also commonplace. Most people would agree rape is immoral yet at various times it is quite acceptable as in, for instance, droit du seigneur, not because people didn't think it wrong but because nobody who would object could object the god given right of the local lord.
The action of a fifty year old man having sex with a nine year old id wrong in any time but the fact of the matter is the powerful can do anything they like. History is the long struggle of the weak against the powerful, believing all are equal and entitled to fair treatment is radical in any age - including our own.
Is there some deeply significant point point you are trying to make? Because if there is would you make it.
At various times people will commit an immoral act that at other tinmes would be horrifying
and what determines morality is simply a matter of time and place.
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recovering conservative
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Was The Founder Of Islam A Paedophile?
I am inclined to believe that religion is as good or as bad as its practitioners want it to be. It's stupid to pull out quotes from the Bible, or in this case - the Quran, and judge how a religion is practiced, interpreted, and experienced by its adherents, based on cherrypicking a few quotes.
And it's equally asinine to judge someone who lived in a different culture centuries ago by modern, western standards! When one of my older brothers was doing geneological research of our family's history a few years ago, one of shocking discoveries was that: on our father's side of the family - our great, great, grandmother was married to our great, great, grandfather when she was only 13 years old, and he was 35. She gave birth to her first child at age 14, and bore ten more children for him (four of which died young) before she died herself during childbirth at about age 37..........let's just say that life was a hell of a lot different years ago than it is now....even for those of us who are now wallowing in European exceptionalism!
And it's equally asinine to judge someone who lived in a different culture centuries ago by modern, western standards! When one of my older brothers was doing geneological research of our family's history a few years ago, one of shocking discoveries was that: on our father's side of the family - our great, great, grandmother was married to our great, great, grandfather when she was only 13 years old, and he was 35. She gave birth to her first child at age 14, and bore ten more children for him (four of which died young) before she died herself during childbirth at about age 37..........let's just say that life was a hell of a lot different years ago than it is now....even for those of us who are now wallowing in European exceptionalism!
Was The Founder Of Islam A Paedophile?
recovering conservative;1336552 wrote: I am inclined to believe that religion is as good or as bad as its practitioners want it to be. It's stupid to pull out quotes from the Bible, or in this case - the Quran, and judge how a religion is practiced, interpreted, and experienced by its adherents, based on cherrypicking a few quotes.
And it's equally asinine to judge someone who lived in a different culture centuries ago by modern, western standards! When one of my older brothers was doing geneological research of our family's history a few years ago, one of shocking discoveries was that: on our father's side of the family - our great, great, grandmother was married to our great, great, grandfather when she was only 13 years old, and he was 35. She gave birth to her first child at age 14, and bore ten more children for him (four of which died young) before she died herself during childbirth at about age 37..........let's just say that life was a hell of a lot different years ago than it is now....even for those of us who are now wallowing in European exceptionalism!Given that he was your relative you don't feel this influences you to not be upset by it? In consideration then what if she were 9? "It's ok because it was my grandmother" sound right or no?
I'll settle for whether the 9 year old child objected being irrelevant if you can
And it's equally asinine to judge someone who lived in a different culture centuries ago by modern, western standards! When one of my older brothers was doing geneological research of our family's history a few years ago, one of shocking discoveries was that: on our father's side of the family - our great, great, grandmother was married to our great, great, grandfather when she was only 13 years old, and he was 35. She gave birth to her first child at age 14, and bore ten more children for him (four of which died young) before she died herself during childbirth at about age 37..........let's just say that life was a hell of a lot different years ago than it is now....even for those of us who are now wallowing in European exceptionalism!Given that he was your relative you don't feel this influences you to not be upset by it? In consideration then what if she were 9? "It's ok because it was my grandmother" sound right or no?
I'll settle for whether the 9 year old child objected being irrelevant if you can
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recovering conservative
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Was The Founder Of Islam A Paedophile?
K.Snyder;1336554 wrote: Given that he was your relative you don't feel this influences you to not be upset by it?
I wasn't living during those times! A lot of things would have upset me. We're talking about a century and a half ago in rural Quebec, where life was short; disease was rampant; and most had little or no schooling; married young, and had lots of children before going to the grave at what we now consider to be middle age. Maybe 13 would have been a young age for a girl to be married, even at that time.....but, it is also very likely that she may have already been pregnant, and had to get married.
In consideration then what if she were 9? "It's ok because it was my grandmother" sound right or no?
I'll settle for whether the 9 year old child objected being irrelevant if you can
Was the marriage consumated when Aisha was 9 years old? I've heard Muslims argue about this, and pull out the Arabic translations. I didn't feel the need to pursue the point at length, and I am highly suspicious of those who do! Most of this crap comes from fundamentalist Christians who feign concern for how women are treated in Muslim countries, while they would do exactly the same things in the U.S. or Canada if and when they get the chance!
I wasn't living during those times! A lot of things would have upset me. We're talking about a century and a half ago in rural Quebec, where life was short; disease was rampant; and most had little or no schooling; married young, and had lots of children before going to the grave at what we now consider to be middle age. Maybe 13 would have been a young age for a girl to be married, even at that time.....but, it is also very likely that she may have already been pregnant, and had to get married.
In consideration then what if she were 9? "It's ok because it was my grandmother" sound right or no?
I'll settle for whether the 9 year old child objected being irrelevant if you can
Was the marriage consumated when Aisha was 9 years old? I've heard Muslims argue about this, and pull out the Arabic translations. I didn't feel the need to pursue the point at length, and I am highly suspicious of those who do! Most of this crap comes from fundamentalist Christians who feign concern for how women are treated in Muslim countries, while they would do exactly the same things in the U.S. or Canada if and when they get the chance!
Was The Founder Of Islam A Paedophile?
recovering conservative;1336556 wrote: I wasn't living during those times! A lot of things would have upset me. We're talking about a century and a half ago in rural Quebec, where life was short; disease was rampant; and most had little or no schooling; married young, and had lots of children before going to the grave at what we now consider to be middle age. Maybe 13 would have been a young age for a girl to be married, even at that time.....but, it is also very likely that she may have already been pregnant, and had to get married. Shall I take this as you not objecting to 13 year olds getting married back then and in today's societies as well? If so what's the separation between a 9 year old and a 13 year old? It's obvious that physicality plays the crucial role in defining morality in this context is why I ask.
recovering conservative;1336556 wrote:
Was the marriage consumated when Aisha was 9 years old? I've heard Muslims argue about this, and pull out the Arabic translations. I didn't feel the need to pursue the point at length, and I am highly suspicious of those who do! I'm curious as to why...Bounding children into slavery is just as bad as one raping a 9 year old child is it not? In fact it could be argued slavery is far worse considering the emotional trauma, but then again I'm quite sure rape is just as horrific. Whats more is the knowledge that it's the parents selling them into the slavery so their name can be placed upon a pedestal. The question being is it appropriate to condemn them for their actions based off of today's standards as opposed to what's been/being observed. Interpretations have no place in physics, it's just quite frankly stupid to even suggest itrecovering conservative;1336556 wrote: Most of this crap comes from fundamentalist Christians who feign concern for how women are treated in Muslim countries, while they would do exactly the same things in the U.S. or Canada if and when they get the chance!This thread shall not be one such time trust me! :wah:
recovering conservative;1336556 wrote:
Was the marriage consumated when Aisha was 9 years old? I've heard Muslims argue about this, and pull out the Arabic translations. I didn't feel the need to pursue the point at length, and I am highly suspicious of those who do! I'm curious as to why...Bounding children into slavery is just as bad as one raping a 9 year old child is it not? In fact it could be argued slavery is far worse considering the emotional trauma, but then again I'm quite sure rape is just as horrific. Whats more is the knowledge that it's the parents selling them into the slavery so their name can be placed upon a pedestal. The question being is it appropriate to condemn them for their actions based off of today's standards as opposed to what's been/being observed. Interpretations have no place in physics, it's just quite frankly stupid to even suggest itrecovering conservative;1336556 wrote: Most of this crap comes from fundamentalist Christians who feign concern for how women are treated in Muslim countries, while they would do exactly the same things in the U.S. or Canada if and when they get the chance!This thread shall not be one such time trust me! :wah:
Was The Founder Of Islam A Paedophile?
posted by recovering conservative
Was the marriage consumated when Aisha was 9 years old? I've heard Muslims argue about this, and pull out the Arabic translations. I didn't feel the need to pursue the point at length, and I am highly suspicious of those who do! Most of this crap comes from fundamentalist Christians who feign concern for how women are treated in Muslim countries, while they would do exactly the same things in the U.S. or Canada if and when they get the chance!
Good point, never suspected glaswegian was a fundamentalist christian but I suppose that description could apply equally to orangemen
Was the marriage consumated when Aisha was 9 years old? I've heard Muslims argue about this, and pull out the Arabic translations. I didn't feel the need to pursue the point at length, and I am highly suspicious of those who do! Most of this crap comes from fundamentalist Christians who feign concern for how women are treated in Muslim countries, while they would do exactly the same things in the U.S. or Canada if and when they get the chance!
Good point, never suspected glaswegian was a fundamentalist christian but I suppose that description could apply equally to orangemen
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recovering conservative
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Was The Founder Of Islam A Paedophile?
K.Snyder;1336568 wrote: Shall I take this as you not objecting to 13 year olds getting married back then and in today's societies as well? If so what's the separation between a 9 year old and a 13 year old? It's obvious that physicality plays the crucial role in defining morality in this context is why I ask.
I didn't say that! I'm trying to get across the point that you can't judge people who lived in the past, and in very different social circumstances, by modern, western standards! And, I asked previously about that 9 year old thing -- do we know for a fact that the marriage was consumated when Aisha was 9 years old? During these times, a marriage may have been arranged by the parents when the girl was just a child. I've read about cases such as one in Yemen last year, where a man was prosecuted for having sex with a girl he had already married because she was under age (whatever it is in Yemen!)
I'm curious as to why...Bounding children into slavery is just as bad as one raping a 9 year old child is it not? In fact it could be argued slavery is far worse considering the emotional trauma, but then again I'm quite sure rape is just as horrific. Whats more is the knowledge that it's the parents selling them into the slavery so their name can be placed upon a pedestal. The question being is it appropriate to condemn them for their actions based off of today's standards as opposed to what's been/being observed. Interpretations have no place in physics, it's just quite frankly stupid to even suggest it
And we're back at square one! What Muhammed did in the Arabian Peninsula 700 years ago has as much bearing on Muslims today as Jews and Christians today by the verses and chapters in the Bible that they ignore or re-interpret. Numbers 31 comes to mind since it is where the Israelites are not only told to kill every man, woman, child and domestic animal; but given the permission to take prepubescent girls as concubines (sexual slavery by today's standards) How many Christians and Jews believe in concubinage today? How many Muslims believe it's okay to have sex with 9 year old girls today? And that again is under the assumption that the marriage was consummated when she was 9.
]This thread shall not be one such time trust me! :wah:
The originators of Neoconservative dogma have tailored their message to appeal to white, evangelical Christians, but there are many prominent atheists who are either neocons themselves, or pretty damn close to it!
I think the reason why guys like Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens are held out there as The atheist leaders by the mainstream media, is because they parrot so much of the Neocon agenda. Hitchens made more eloquent arguments for the Iraq Invasion and continuing Occupation than most of the payed hacks of the Bush Administration. If it wasn't for his service in influencing the march to war, he would still be an obscure, elite writer in America. And Harris said a lot of nasty things about Christians which made them mad; but he set up a tiered system of bad religions in the "End Of Faith," with Buddhism being his favourite, Christianity being dangerous; but Islam being the worst of all, and made an argument in many of his interviews that we should be more concerned about the threat of radical Islam than we should be about fundamentalist Christianity, because Christianity had the Reformation......he doesn't seem to pay attention to the backtracking that is going on in American fundamentalism these days. They are tearing up the enlightened liberal ideals of the Reformation and trying to take their country down the road to Christian theocracy.
So, it doesn't matter what your beliefs are as much as who you are taking sides with in the culture wars. Ayan Hirsi Ali has advocated Muslims converting to Christianity, because she argues that most Muslims will not be receptive to humanism, and Christianity is better than the religion she grew up with. I don't blame her for her ill feelings about how she was treated by the religion of her birth, but her argument is a joke to anyone who came out of a Christian sect or cult, especially when the broader movement of Christian fundamentalism is getting more aggressive, more beligerent, and more insular in their thinking. Before Hirsi Ali cashes any more cheques from the American Enterprize Institute, she should investigate some of the beliefs of her new friends on the evangelical right!
I didn't say that! I'm trying to get across the point that you can't judge people who lived in the past, and in very different social circumstances, by modern, western standards! And, I asked previously about that 9 year old thing -- do we know for a fact that the marriage was consumated when Aisha was 9 years old? During these times, a marriage may have been arranged by the parents when the girl was just a child. I've read about cases such as one in Yemen last year, where a man was prosecuted for having sex with a girl he had already married because she was under age (whatever it is in Yemen!)
I'm curious as to why...Bounding children into slavery is just as bad as one raping a 9 year old child is it not? In fact it could be argued slavery is far worse considering the emotional trauma, but then again I'm quite sure rape is just as horrific. Whats more is the knowledge that it's the parents selling them into the slavery so their name can be placed upon a pedestal. The question being is it appropriate to condemn them for their actions based off of today's standards as opposed to what's been/being observed. Interpretations have no place in physics, it's just quite frankly stupid to even suggest it
And we're back at square one! What Muhammed did in the Arabian Peninsula 700 years ago has as much bearing on Muslims today as Jews and Christians today by the verses and chapters in the Bible that they ignore or re-interpret. Numbers 31 comes to mind since it is where the Israelites are not only told to kill every man, woman, child and domestic animal; but given the permission to take prepubescent girls as concubines (sexual slavery by today's standards) How many Christians and Jews believe in concubinage today? How many Muslims believe it's okay to have sex with 9 year old girls today? And that again is under the assumption that the marriage was consummated when she was 9.
]This thread shall not be one such time trust me! :wah:
The originators of Neoconservative dogma have tailored their message to appeal to white, evangelical Christians, but there are many prominent atheists who are either neocons themselves, or pretty damn close to it!
I think the reason why guys like Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens are held out there as The atheist leaders by the mainstream media, is because they parrot so much of the Neocon agenda. Hitchens made more eloquent arguments for the Iraq Invasion and continuing Occupation than most of the payed hacks of the Bush Administration. If it wasn't for his service in influencing the march to war, he would still be an obscure, elite writer in America. And Harris said a lot of nasty things about Christians which made them mad; but he set up a tiered system of bad religions in the "End Of Faith," with Buddhism being his favourite, Christianity being dangerous; but Islam being the worst of all, and made an argument in many of his interviews that we should be more concerned about the threat of radical Islam than we should be about fundamentalist Christianity, because Christianity had the Reformation......he doesn't seem to pay attention to the backtracking that is going on in American fundamentalism these days. They are tearing up the enlightened liberal ideals of the Reformation and trying to take their country down the road to Christian theocracy.
So, it doesn't matter what your beliefs are as much as who you are taking sides with in the culture wars. Ayan Hirsi Ali has advocated Muslims converting to Christianity, because she argues that most Muslims will not be receptive to humanism, and Christianity is better than the religion she grew up with. I don't blame her for her ill feelings about how she was treated by the religion of her birth, but her argument is a joke to anyone who came out of a Christian sect or cult, especially when the broader movement of Christian fundamentalism is getting more aggressive, more beligerent, and more insular in their thinking. Before Hirsi Ali cashes any more cheques from the American Enterprize Institute, she should investigate some of the beliefs of her new friends on the evangelical right!
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fuzzywuzzy
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Was The Founder Of Islam A Paedophile?
ummmm Ayan Hirsi is an Athiest. and she didn't advocate .....she argued that if muslims (within her particular african "culture") were a little more like Christians they would be better off. and she didn't mean fundimentalists christians either because that would make her a hypocrit. Ayan is a political figure and is often taken out of context by both Islamic fundimentalists (who have a price onher head ) and held up to be some kind of martyr by Christian fundimentalists. she wishes to be neither.
Was The Founder Of Islam A Paedophile?
Glaswegian;1335609 wrote: Let’s apply the line of reasoning which underpins the above argument to a real life case - the trial of Adolf Eichmann.
In 1961 the Israelis put Adolf Eichmann on trial in Jerusalem for war crimes. Eichmann’s defence in this trial was that he was merely following orders, which is to say, he was merely following the moral code and practices of a political regime which held that it was the moral duty of the Aryan race to eliminate the Jews from the face of the earth. Thus, Eichmann was essentially claiming that he was acting in accordance with the cultural norms which held sway in Nazi Germany between 1933 and 1945, and doing what every patriotic German was expected to do.
Now according to your line of reasoning, Bryn, the Israelis should not have put Eichmann on trial. Why? Because they were judging a man whose actions were performed within the moral and cultural context of Nazi Germany, and they were making their judgement from within the very different moral and cultural context which obtained in Israel in 1961. If the Israelis had done what you advocated above - namely, considered the actions of Eichmann within the framework of the time and place in which he lived (i.e., Nazi Germany) - then they would have had to take their hats off to the man in recognition of the remarkable skill with which he expedited the Final Solution. Maybe they should have arranged a fling for him with Shelley Winters instead of hanging him?
If you had taken the time to read a response I made to spot earlier in this thread then you would know that I do not regard the set of moral values I adhere to as absolute and unvarying.
Viz.
That is perfectly clear.
What you have shown by this remark is that your moral imagination is extremely limited. I would never dream of saying that all people of all ages must live by my moral code. For that would be tantamount to saying that my moral code is the best that can possibly be achieved. And I know that it isn’t. But neither is yours nor anyone else’s who is alive right now or who has lived before us.
I firmly believe that all moral codes, past and present, can be improved upon - yours and mine included. This is why I can imagine people in, say, fifty years or a hundred years or a thousand years living by moral codes which are superior to mine and yours and those of our contemporaries. Although you might be incapable of imagining this scenario in which moral codes are continually improved upon and refined by individuals who live in future ages, let me assure you that such a thing is not beyond the bounds of all possibility and the power of human beings to accomplish.
Consider this:
My moral code and your moral code are better than Muhammad's. For example, we don't fu*k little children. Right? So you see - moral codes can be improved upon.
There are certain conditions under which life is not worth living. This is something which the moral coward refuses to face up to for he wants to cling to life at any cost. Human beings are not simply at the mercy of cultural norms. In the last analysis, they are free to act. Which means they can choose to disobey cultural norms. It is possible to act nobly even with a gun placed against one’s head.
The chief priest in your example could have refused to cut out the hearts of his living victims even if this resulted in death for himself. But for you it was okay for him to continue doing what he was doing. And this particular religionist was killing thousands, wasn’t he? As I said, there are certain conditions under which life is not worth living. And that butcher's job fits the bill. For me, anyway.
In order to bring out the foolishness which underlies your whole argument let’s apply this sentence of yours to the case of Adolph Hitler.
mutatis mutandis…
We might condemn the culture of Nazism as immoral according to our values but we can hardly condemn the chief mastermind of the Holocaust for his actions.
Yeah. Whisper it soothingly into the ovens at Dachau.
I'll get back to you with a considered response to this when I've settled back in but my immediate response is that you want your cake both ways.
You insist that you do not regard a set of moral values as invariable but then you insist on judging other cultures by your set of moral values.
If you truly believe that moral values are not invariable then the only possible answer to your question as to whether paedophilia is wrong in all places and at all times is no.
If moral values are not invariable then why was the Chief Priest a moral coward for fulfilling the duties demanded by his post?
As to Eichmann and Hitler, you example is flawed. When considering Mohammed or the Chief Priest the relevant fact is that they are a product of the culture they are born into, this is not the case with the Nazis who spent most of their lives within a western, Christian culture before corrupting it. The reasoning might work for the Nazi Youth who grew up with those ideas but not for the adults that created the culture. In the same way, the people of Cambodia forgive those children (now adults) who, under Pol Pot, murdered babies and gave their parents over to the torturers, because they were brainwashed into doing so from birth.
In 1961 the Israelis put Adolf Eichmann on trial in Jerusalem for war crimes. Eichmann’s defence in this trial was that he was merely following orders, which is to say, he was merely following the moral code and practices of a political regime which held that it was the moral duty of the Aryan race to eliminate the Jews from the face of the earth. Thus, Eichmann was essentially claiming that he was acting in accordance with the cultural norms which held sway in Nazi Germany between 1933 and 1945, and doing what every patriotic German was expected to do.
Now according to your line of reasoning, Bryn, the Israelis should not have put Eichmann on trial. Why? Because they were judging a man whose actions were performed within the moral and cultural context of Nazi Germany, and they were making their judgement from within the very different moral and cultural context which obtained in Israel in 1961. If the Israelis had done what you advocated above - namely, considered the actions of Eichmann within the framework of the time and place in which he lived (i.e., Nazi Germany) - then they would have had to take their hats off to the man in recognition of the remarkable skill with which he expedited the Final Solution. Maybe they should have arranged a fling for him with Shelley Winters instead of hanging him?
If you had taken the time to read a response I made to spot earlier in this thread then you would know that I do not regard the set of moral values I adhere to as absolute and unvarying.
Viz.
That is perfectly clear.
What you have shown by this remark is that your moral imagination is extremely limited. I would never dream of saying that all people of all ages must live by my moral code. For that would be tantamount to saying that my moral code is the best that can possibly be achieved. And I know that it isn’t. But neither is yours nor anyone else’s who is alive right now or who has lived before us.
I firmly believe that all moral codes, past and present, can be improved upon - yours and mine included. This is why I can imagine people in, say, fifty years or a hundred years or a thousand years living by moral codes which are superior to mine and yours and those of our contemporaries. Although you might be incapable of imagining this scenario in which moral codes are continually improved upon and refined by individuals who live in future ages, let me assure you that such a thing is not beyond the bounds of all possibility and the power of human beings to accomplish.
Consider this:
My moral code and your moral code are better than Muhammad's. For example, we don't fu*k little children. Right? So you see - moral codes can be improved upon.
There are certain conditions under which life is not worth living. This is something which the moral coward refuses to face up to for he wants to cling to life at any cost. Human beings are not simply at the mercy of cultural norms. In the last analysis, they are free to act. Which means they can choose to disobey cultural norms. It is possible to act nobly even with a gun placed against one’s head.
The chief priest in your example could have refused to cut out the hearts of his living victims even if this resulted in death for himself. But for you it was okay for him to continue doing what he was doing. And this particular religionist was killing thousands, wasn’t he? As I said, there are certain conditions under which life is not worth living. And that butcher's job fits the bill. For me, anyway.
In order to bring out the foolishness which underlies your whole argument let’s apply this sentence of yours to the case of Adolph Hitler.
mutatis mutandis…
We might condemn the culture of Nazism as immoral according to our values but we can hardly condemn the chief mastermind of the Holocaust for his actions.
Yeah. Whisper it soothingly into the ovens at Dachau.
I'll get back to you with a considered response to this when I've settled back in but my immediate response is that you want your cake both ways.
You insist that you do not regard a set of moral values as invariable but then you insist on judging other cultures by your set of moral values.
If you truly believe that moral values are not invariable then the only possible answer to your question as to whether paedophilia is wrong in all places and at all times is no.
If moral values are not invariable then why was the Chief Priest a moral coward for fulfilling the duties demanded by his post?
As to Eichmann and Hitler, you example is flawed. When considering Mohammed or the Chief Priest the relevant fact is that they are a product of the culture they are born into, this is not the case with the Nazis who spent most of their lives within a western, Christian culture before corrupting it. The reasoning might work for the Nazi Youth who grew up with those ideas but not for the adults that created the culture. In the same way, the people of Cambodia forgive those children (now adults) who, under Pol Pot, murdered babies and gave their parents over to the torturers, because they were brainwashed into doing so from birth.
Was The Founder Of Islam A Paedophile?
recovering conservative;1336655 wrote: I didn't say that! I'm trying to get across the point that you can't judge people who lived in the past, and in very different social circumstances, by modern, western standards! I understand the point you're making. I also know that when applying this bit of history to religion it assumes the practice is moral and just. It then suggests that today's society would not object to it if it's to be considered a moral practice, that in which religion preaches, lest the entire point of it all be considered redundant logic.
What's left is for people to individually decide whether society as a whole is either progressing or declining on moral terms, which is defined by the majority of society. It's blatantly evident moral integrity hasn't remained equal or else we'd partake in it, therefore it must be concluded that the very practice is inherently immoral. It's logic 101
What's left is for people to individually decide whether society as a whole is either progressing or declining on moral terms, which is defined by the majority of society. It's blatantly evident moral integrity hasn't remained equal or else we'd partake in it, therefore it must be concluded that the very practice is inherently immoral. It's logic 101
Was The Founder Of Islam A Paedophile?
Glaswegian;1336384 wrote: Your claim to be offended by the title of this thread reeks of dishonesty and pretence. It is no more convincing than the phony display of outrage put on by the Muslim pantaloons during the Muhammad Cartoons fiasco.
How deeply 'offended' you must have been by those cartoons, Bryn Mawr. You must have been sleepless at night with the 'offence' they caused you.
Instead of pretending to be offended by the title of this thread - instead of putting on a contrived and shameful act of snivelling - be offended by this:
THEO VAN GOGH
Murdered for making a film critical of Islam
~o0o~
In what way is my being offended related to the publishing of the cartoons? I see no link at all apart from your desire to make a debating point.
Why should I have been offended by the cartoons? I have no cultural objection to depictions of God - I was never raised as a Puritan iconoclast. As a deliberately provocative act it was unnecessary but personal offence, no.
If you had read my posts over the years on this site then would know that I am highly offended by such shameful acts as the example you give - the acts of cowards using violence in place of rational debate and the law, whether it be individuals, states or cultures is abhorrent.
You know, as this thread has progressed I have been trying to analyse why I was so offended by your initial post and it is down to the intellectual dishonesty of it - using a shock title that you were not prepared to discuss to attract attention to your proposed discussion about modern day religious abuses was cheep and shoddy. The subject stood up by itself without the Sunday Tabloid headline.
How deeply 'offended' you must have been by those cartoons, Bryn Mawr. You must have been sleepless at night with the 'offence' they caused you.
Instead of pretending to be offended by the title of this thread - instead of putting on a contrived and shameful act of snivelling - be offended by this:
THEO VAN GOGH
Murdered for making a film critical of Islam
~o0o~
In what way is my being offended related to the publishing of the cartoons? I see no link at all apart from your desire to make a debating point.
Why should I have been offended by the cartoons? I have no cultural objection to depictions of God - I was never raised as a Puritan iconoclast. As a deliberately provocative act it was unnecessary but personal offence, no.
If you had read my posts over the years on this site then would know that I am highly offended by such shameful acts as the example you give - the acts of cowards using violence in place of rational debate and the law, whether it be individuals, states or cultures is abhorrent.
You know, as this thread has progressed I have been trying to analyse why I was so offended by your initial post and it is down to the intellectual dishonesty of it - using a shock title that you were not prepared to discuss to attract attention to your proposed discussion about modern day religious abuses was cheep and shoddy. The subject stood up by itself without the Sunday Tabloid headline.
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CinnamonBear
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Was The Founder Of Islam A Paedophile?
This is an incredible and informative thread. Thank you, Glas, mucho.
While I don't agree with all your views, I certainly agree with your opinion about Mohammad being a pedo pig. I see that as an obvious given.
While appreciating this good read, I'm noticing a pattern. Not just here, but on other boards as well. Those who are so easily offended by other points of view baffle me. Goodness, is there no concept or tolerance of opposing opinions? No easy flowing rational discussion? Startling how some so quickly descend into name calling and demands for answers to so-called "questions" while behaving so poorly in initially replying. There's something mysterious about that to me. When people immediately head off into wild accusations, assumptions and name calling, I see that as an insecurity on their part, struck nerve, a character flaw. I choose not to engage them further as much as I may be tempted to.
Enter self-control. However, the way you handled it was unique, delightful and I enjoyed reading it. Humor and levity is always a good thing.
Somewhere earlier on this thread, a poster named fuzzywuzzy expressed an opposing view from the pack. I appreciated that and agree with her. Bravo to her for feeling secure enough within herself to share her opinion and damn the torpedoes.
One last thing, Glas .... you compiled a list of quotes from the Koran. May I borrow (copy) it? Thanks.
While I don't agree with all your views, I certainly agree with your opinion about Mohammad being a pedo pig. I see that as an obvious given.
While appreciating this good read, I'm noticing a pattern. Not just here, but on other boards as well. Those who are so easily offended by other points of view baffle me. Goodness, is there no concept or tolerance of opposing opinions? No easy flowing rational discussion? Startling how some so quickly descend into name calling and demands for answers to so-called "questions" while behaving so poorly in initially replying. There's something mysterious about that to me. When people immediately head off into wild accusations, assumptions and name calling, I see that as an insecurity on their part, struck nerve, a character flaw. I choose not to engage them further as much as I may be tempted to.
Enter self-control. However, the way you handled it was unique, delightful and I enjoyed reading it. Humor and levity is always a good thing. Somewhere earlier on this thread, a poster named fuzzywuzzy expressed an opposing view from the pack. I appreciated that and agree with her. Bravo to her for feeling secure enough within herself to share her opinion and damn the torpedoes.
One last thing, Glas .... you compiled a list of quotes from the Koran. May I borrow (copy) it? Thanks.
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recovering conservative
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- Joined: Sun Nov 02, 2008 12:28 pm
Was The Founder Of Islam A Paedophile?
fuzzywuzzy;1336680 wrote: ummmm Ayan Hirsi is an Athiest. and she didn't advocate .....she argued that if muslims (within her particular african "culture") were a little more like Christians they would be better off. and she didn't mean fundimentalists christians either because that would make her a hypocrit. Ayan is a political figure and is often taken out of context by both Islamic fundimentalists (who have a price onher head ) and held up to be some kind of martyr by Christian fundimentalists. she wishes to be neither.
No, she argues in her new book "Nomad" and has expressed the same point in recent lectures, that "liberal" Christians should actively try to proselytize Muslim communities in the West. There is an implicit assumption that there is no such thing as liberal or moderate Islam, and she is totally oblivious to the fact that liberal Christians are not among the Christians that she rubs elbows with as a paid spokesperson for the American corporat right! Anyway, here is one of the many interviews where she elaborates on this point:
Q: One of your more startling arguments in Nomad is that Christian churches should proselytize in immigrant communities to try to convert Muslims.
A: Look at the amount of money Saudi Arabia spends on coming into Muslim communities in America and Europe, building schools and also taking leaders and training them in Mecca and Medina, then replanting them. It’s surprising that no other group of people is targeting the same communities. If you look at Western civilization, at the institutions [and movements] that were engaged in changing people’s hearts and minds—the Christian Church, humanists, feminists—they are doing next to nothing in these Muslim communities. When I was in Holland [recently], I heard about a Christian mission that had been proselytizing in Morocco. The government kicked them out and sent them back to Holland. I thought, “You don’t have to stop proselytizing—just go to the Muslim community in Amsterdam west and carry on there.” But of course there, they’re not only going to face the radical Muslims as opponents, they’re also going to face the multicultural opponents, saying they’re not supposed to be telling people to leave their religion.
Q: So how would they do it?
A: Next to every mosque, build a Christian centre, an enlightenment centre, a feminist centre. There are tons of websites, financed with Saudi money, promoting Wahabism. We need to set up our own websites—Christian, feminist, humanist—trying to target the same people, saying, we have an alternative moral framework to Islam. We have better ideas.
On why Christians should try to convert Muslims - Books, The Interview - Macleans.ca
Now, from my POV, I came out of a Christian sect that would have been every bit as oppressive as the Islam that Hirsi Ali describes in Somalia! The only thing holding them back is that secularism is hanging on by its fingernails. Now, how could she possibly be so stupid that she can't be aware of this fact? When she goes on speaking engagements and interviews on behalf of the AEI, she is often on the same stage as Christian theocrats as Mike Huckabee -- who try to sugarcoat the message, but nevertheless advocate "Christian Law" and "Christian Government."
The last time I heard her speak -- here on the CBC Radio show - Ideas -- she spends at least the first half of her lecture talking about how Muslims are not concerned with this world, but are living for the next; and alternatively, enlightened Christians in the West are living in the here and now.
Now, if she wants to do a true, honest comparison of the merits of world religions, why not compare Muslim societies in Africa with African Christian ones? The primary reason faith-healing hucksters starting with Ernest Angley, and continuing to this day, are so popular in Southern Africa, is because the Christian African is living in the same misery as the Muslim African, and is quick to look for some magic promise for healing!
As far as comparing tolerance goes, African Christians are killing albinos, burning women suspected of witchcraft, and killing homosexuals.....even passing laws in Uganda prosecuting family and friends who refuse to turn in homosexuals to the authorities! But Ayaan never talks about this kind of Christianity! Or the fact that it has been nurtured and supported by American and German evangelicals. If she was really concerned about the issue of oppression, she would be confronting these evangelical hacks that are part of her audience and support network in America!
No, she argues in her new book "Nomad" and has expressed the same point in recent lectures, that "liberal" Christians should actively try to proselytize Muslim communities in the West. There is an implicit assumption that there is no such thing as liberal or moderate Islam, and she is totally oblivious to the fact that liberal Christians are not among the Christians that she rubs elbows with as a paid spokesperson for the American corporat right! Anyway, here is one of the many interviews where she elaborates on this point:
Q: One of your more startling arguments in Nomad is that Christian churches should proselytize in immigrant communities to try to convert Muslims.
A: Look at the amount of money Saudi Arabia spends on coming into Muslim communities in America and Europe, building schools and also taking leaders and training them in Mecca and Medina, then replanting them. It’s surprising that no other group of people is targeting the same communities. If you look at Western civilization, at the institutions [and movements] that were engaged in changing people’s hearts and minds—the Christian Church, humanists, feminists—they are doing next to nothing in these Muslim communities. When I was in Holland [recently], I heard about a Christian mission that had been proselytizing in Morocco. The government kicked them out and sent them back to Holland. I thought, “You don’t have to stop proselytizing—just go to the Muslim community in Amsterdam west and carry on there.” But of course there, they’re not only going to face the radical Muslims as opponents, they’re also going to face the multicultural opponents, saying they’re not supposed to be telling people to leave their religion.
Q: So how would they do it?
A: Next to every mosque, build a Christian centre, an enlightenment centre, a feminist centre. There are tons of websites, financed with Saudi money, promoting Wahabism. We need to set up our own websites—Christian, feminist, humanist—trying to target the same people, saying, we have an alternative moral framework to Islam. We have better ideas.
On why Christians should try to convert Muslims - Books, The Interview - Macleans.ca
Now, from my POV, I came out of a Christian sect that would have been every bit as oppressive as the Islam that Hirsi Ali describes in Somalia! The only thing holding them back is that secularism is hanging on by its fingernails. Now, how could she possibly be so stupid that she can't be aware of this fact? When she goes on speaking engagements and interviews on behalf of the AEI, she is often on the same stage as Christian theocrats as Mike Huckabee -- who try to sugarcoat the message, but nevertheless advocate "Christian Law" and "Christian Government."
The last time I heard her speak -- here on the CBC Radio show - Ideas -- she spends at least the first half of her lecture talking about how Muslims are not concerned with this world, but are living for the next; and alternatively, enlightened Christians in the West are living in the here and now.
Now, if she wants to do a true, honest comparison of the merits of world religions, why not compare Muslim societies in Africa with African Christian ones? The primary reason faith-healing hucksters starting with Ernest Angley, and continuing to this day, are so popular in Southern Africa, is because the Christian African is living in the same misery as the Muslim African, and is quick to look for some magic promise for healing!
As far as comparing tolerance goes, African Christians are killing albinos, burning women suspected of witchcraft, and killing homosexuals.....even passing laws in Uganda prosecuting family and friends who refuse to turn in homosexuals to the authorities! But Ayaan never talks about this kind of Christianity! Or the fact that it has been nurtured and supported by American and German evangelicals. If she was really concerned about the issue of oppression, she would be confronting these evangelical hacks that are part of her audience and support network in America!
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recovering conservative
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Was The Founder Of Islam A Paedophile?
K.Snyder;1336696 wrote: I understand the point you're making. I also know that when applying this bit of history to religion it assumes the practice is moral and just. It then suggests that today's society would not object to it if it's to be considered a moral practice, that in which religion preaches, lest the entire point of it all be considered redundant logic.
Whatever a verse in the Bible or the Quran says, does not inform us about how either liberal or conservative believers internalize that message. This "Muhammed was a pedophile" meme is just intended to disparage the other religion, and does not tell us why we can't find Muslim clerics who say it's okay to have sex with nine year olds....as intended by the promoters of this story.
What's left is for people to individually decide whether society as a whole is either progressing or declining on moral terms, which is defined by the majority of society. It's blatantly evident moral integrity hasn't remained equal or else we'd partake in it, therefore it must be concluded that the very practice is inherently immoral. It's logic 101
The advocates of the position that Islam is an existential threat to the West, and there is no such thing as moderate, western-friendly versions of this religion, need to start talking about the consequences before I start respecting their views. In other words, are the anti-Islam hardliners telling us we need to fight a total war against the billion and a half Muslims in the World? Or, are they saying that America and Western allies need to keep the military occupations of Muslim countries going forever? Because the no-mosques and no-muslims movements make no sense otherwise.
Whatever a verse in the Bible or the Quran says, does not inform us about how either liberal or conservative believers internalize that message. This "Muhammed was a pedophile" meme is just intended to disparage the other religion, and does not tell us why we can't find Muslim clerics who say it's okay to have sex with nine year olds....as intended by the promoters of this story.
What's left is for people to individually decide whether society as a whole is either progressing or declining on moral terms, which is defined by the majority of society. It's blatantly evident moral integrity hasn't remained equal or else we'd partake in it, therefore it must be concluded that the very practice is inherently immoral. It's logic 101
The advocates of the position that Islam is an existential threat to the West, and there is no such thing as moderate, western-friendly versions of this religion, need to start talking about the consequences before I start respecting their views. In other words, are the anti-Islam hardliners telling us we need to fight a total war against the billion and a half Muslims in the World? Or, are they saying that America and Western allies need to keep the military occupations of Muslim countries going forever? Because the no-mosques and no-muslims movements make no sense otherwise.
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CinnamonBear
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Was The Founder Of Islam A Paedophile?
I rarely post anywhere emails sent to me, but this is from the dailythoughtpad .... I won't post the link ... outlawed, but it fits in perfectly to this thread.
The below quote is from a former American, President, John Q. Adams. WOW, that he knew the future!!
"In the seventh century of the Christian era, a wandering Arab of the lineage of Hagar (Mohammed), the Egyptian, combining the powers of transcendent genius, with the preternatural energy of a fanatic, and the fraudulent spirit of an impostor, proclaimed himself as a messenger from Heaven, and spread desolation and delusion over an extensive portion of the earth. Adopting from the sublime conception of the Mosaic law, the doctrine of one omnipotent god; he connected indissolubly with it, the audacious falsehood, that he was himself his prophet and apostle. Adopting from the new Revelation of Jesus, the faith and hope of immortal life, and of future retribution, he humbled it to the dust by adapting all the rewards and sanctions of his religion to the gratification of the sexual passion. He poisoned the sources of human felicity at the fountain, by degrading the condition of the female sex, and the allowance of polygamy; and he declared undistinguishing and exterminating war, as a part of his religion, against all the rest of mankind.
THE ESSENCE OF HIS DOCTRINE WAS VIOLENCE AND LUST: TO EXALT THE BRUTAL OVER THE SPIRITUAL PART OF HUMAN NATURE... Between these two religions, thus contrasted in their characters, a war of twelve hundred years has already raged. The war is yet flagrant... While the merciless and dissolute dogmas of the false prophet shall furnish motives to human action, there can never be peace upon the earth, and good will towards men"
John Quincy Adams
Sixth President of The United States of America 1830
The below quote is from a former American, President, John Q. Adams. WOW, that he knew the future!!
"In the seventh century of the Christian era, a wandering Arab of the lineage of Hagar (Mohammed), the Egyptian, combining the powers of transcendent genius, with the preternatural energy of a fanatic, and the fraudulent spirit of an impostor, proclaimed himself as a messenger from Heaven, and spread desolation and delusion over an extensive portion of the earth. Adopting from the sublime conception of the Mosaic law, the doctrine of one omnipotent god; he connected indissolubly with it, the audacious falsehood, that he was himself his prophet and apostle. Adopting from the new Revelation of Jesus, the faith and hope of immortal life, and of future retribution, he humbled it to the dust by adapting all the rewards and sanctions of his religion to the gratification of the sexual passion. He poisoned the sources of human felicity at the fountain, by degrading the condition of the female sex, and the allowance of polygamy; and he declared undistinguishing and exterminating war, as a part of his religion, against all the rest of mankind.
THE ESSENCE OF HIS DOCTRINE WAS VIOLENCE AND LUST: TO EXALT THE BRUTAL OVER THE SPIRITUAL PART OF HUMAN NATURE... Between these two religions, thus contrasted in their characters, a war of twelve hundred years has already raged. The war is yet flagrant... While the merciless and dissolute dogmas of the false prophet shall furnish motives to human action, there can never be peace upon the earth, and good will towards men"
John Quincy Adams
Sixth President of The United States of America 1830
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recovering conservative
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Was The Founder Of Islam A Paedophile?
So, John Adams was an idiot Christian zealot! Many of the Founding Fathers had different views on religion. Thomas Paine was a deist, as was Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson......no one is exactly sure if he was a deist or some sort of naturalistic Christian, since he removed all of the miracles and supernatural events from his personal version of the New Testament.
And when Thomas Jefferson and James Madison devised the Virginia Statute on Religious Freedom, Jefferson wrote that he wanted the statute: "to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahomedan, the Hindoo, and Infidel of every denomination." Definitely sentiments that Adams would not of agreed with...but so what?
And when Thomas Jefferson and James Madison devised the Virginia Statute on Religious Freedom, Jefferson wrote that he wanted the statute: "to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahomedan, the Hindoo, and Infidel of every denomination." Definitely sentiments that Adams would not of agreed with...but so what?
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Glaswegian
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Was The Founder Of Islam A Paedophile?
recovering conservative;1336655 wrote: So, it doesn't matter what your beliefs are as much as who you are taking sides with in the culture wars. Ayan Hirsi Ali has advocated Muslims converting to Christianity, because she argues that most Muslims will not be receptive to humanism, and Christianity is better than the religion she grew up with. I don't blame her for her ill feelings about how she was treated by the religion of her birth, but her argument is a joke to anyone who came out of a Christian sect or cult, especially when the broader movement of Christian fundamentalism is getting more aggressive, more beligerent, and more insular in their thinking. Before Hirsi Ali cashes any more cheques from the American Enterprize Institute, she should investigate some of the beliefs of her new friends on the evangelical right!
Ayaan Hirsi Ali is under no illusion about Fundamentalist Christianity. She despises it as much as you and I do, rc.
The following is an excerpt from her book Nomad: A Personal Journey Through The Clash Of Civilizations which I hope will be of interest to yourself and other contributors to the thread. It's rather longish but this woman is worth the trouble.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI
Better hung than the Archbishop of Canterbury
'The message of Nomad is clear and can be stated at the outset: The West urgently needs to compete with the jihadis, the proponents of a holy war, for the hearts and minds of its own Muslim immigrant populations.
It needs to provide education directed at breaking the spell of the infallible Prophet, to protect women from the oppressive dictates of the Quran, and to promote alternative sources of spirituality...
...All Muslims are reared to believe that Muhammad, the founder of their religion, was perfectly virtuous and that the moral strictures he left behind should never be questioned. The Quran, as “revealed” to Muhammad, is considered infallible: it is the true word of Allah, and all its commands must be obeyed without question. This makes Muslims vulnerable to indoctrination in a way that followers of other faiths are not. Moreover, the violence that is endemic in so many Muslim societies, ranging from domestic violence to the incessant celebration of holy war, adds to the difficulty of turning people from that world into Western citizens...
... The West tends to respond to the social failures of Muslim immigrants with what can be called the racism of low expectations. This Western attitude is based on the idea that people of color must be exempted from “normal” standards of behavior. A well-meaning class of people holds that minorities should not share all of the obligations that the majority must meet. In liberal, democratic countries the majorities are white and most minorities are people of color. But most Muslims, like all other immigrants, migrate to the West not to be locked up in a minority, but to search for a better life, one that is safe and predictable and that holds the prospect of a better income and the opportunity of a good quality education for their children. To achieve this, I believe, they must learn to give up some of their habits, dogmas, and practices and acquire new ones.
There are many good men and women in the West who try to resettle refugees, scold their fellow citizens for not doing more, donate money to philanthropic organizations, and strive to eliminate discrimination.
They lobby governments to exempt minorities from the standards of behavior of Western societies; they fight to help minorities preserve their cultures, and they excuse their religion from critical scrutiny. These people mean well, I have no doubt. But I believe that their well-intentioned activism is now a part of the very problem they seek to solve. To be blunt, their efforts to assist Muslims and other minorities are futile because, by postponing or at best prolonging the process of their transition to modernity—by creating the illusion that one can hold on to tribal norms and at the same time become a successful citizen—the proponents of multiculturalism lock subsequent generations born in the West into a no-man’s-land of moral values.
What comes packaged in a compassionate language of acceptance is really a cruel form of racism. And it is all the more cruel because it is expressed in sugary words of virtue.
I believe there are three institutions in Western society that could ease the transition into Western citizenship of these millions of nomads from the tribal cultures they are leaving. They are institutions that can compete with the agents of jihad for the hearts and minds of Muslims.
The first is public education. The European Enlightenment of the eighteenth century gave birth to schools and universities run on the principles of critical thinking. Education was aimed at helping the masses emancipate themselves from poverty, superstition, and tyranny through the development of their cognitive abilities. With the spread of democracy in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, access to such reason-based institutions steadily expanded. Children from all social backgrounds were taught not only math, geography, science, and the arts, but also the social skills and the discipline required to achieve success in the world beyond the classroom. Literature expanded and challenged their imaginations so that they could empathize with characters from other times and places. This public education was geared toward grooming citizens, not preserving the separateness of tribe, the sanctity of the faith, or whatever happened to be the prejudice of the day.
Today, however, many schools and campuses in the West have opted to be more “considerate” of the faith, customs, and habits of the immigrant students they find in their classrooms. Out of a misguided politeness they refrain from openly challenging the beliefs of Muslim children and their parents. Textbooks gloss over the fundamentally unjust rules of Islam and present it as a peaceful religion.
Institutions of reason must cast off these self-imposed blinkers and reinvest in developing the ability to think critically, no matter how impolite some people may find the results.
The second institution that can and must do more is the feminist movement. Western feminists should take on the plight of the Muslim woman and make it their own cause. Their aim should be to help the Muslim woman find her voice. Western feminists have a wealth of experience and resources at their disposal. There are three goals they must aspire to in helping their Muslim sisters. The first is to ensure that Muslim girls are free to complete their education; the second is to help them gain ownership of their own bodies and therefore their sexuality; and the third is to make sure that Muslim women have the opportunity not only to enter the workforce but also to stay in it.
Unlike Muslim women in Muslim countries and Western women in the past, Muslim women in the West face specific constraints imposed on them by their families and communities. It is not enough to classify their problems as “domestic violence”; they are domestic in practice but legal and cultural in nature. There should be campaigns dedicated to exposing the special circumstances and restrictions of Muslim women and the dangers they face in the West; to educate Muslim men on the importance of women’s emancipation and education and to punish them when they use violence; to protect Muslim women from physical harm.
The third and final institution I call on to rise to this challenge is the community of Christian churches. I myself have become an atheist, but I have encountered many Muslims who say they need a spiritual anchor in their lives. I have had the pleasure of meeting Christians whose concept of God is a far cry from Allah. Theirs is a reformed and partly secularized Christianity that could be a very useful ally in the battle against Islamic fanaticism. This modern Christian God is synonymous with love. His agents do not preach hatred, intolerance, and discord; this God is merciful, does not seek state power, and sees no competition with science. His followers view the Bible as a book full of parables, not direct commands to be obeyed. Right now, there are two extremes in Christianity, both of which are a liability to Western civilization. The first consists of those who damn the existence of other groups, They take the Bible literally and reject scientific explanations for the existence of man and nature in the name of “intelligent design.” Such fundamentalist Christian groups invest a lot of time and energy in converting people. But much of what they preach is at odds with the core principles of the Enlightenment. At the other extreme are those who would appease Islam—like the spiritual head of the Church of England, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who holds that the implementation of Shari’a in the UK is inevitable.
Those who adhere to a moderate, peaceful, reformed Christianity are not as active as the first group nor as vocal as the second. They should be. The Christianity of love and tolerance remains one of the West’s most powerful antidotes to the Islam of hate and intolerance.
Ex-Muslims find Jesus Christ to be a more attractive and humane figure than Muhammad, the founder of Islam.'
~o0o~
Ayaan Hirsi Ali is under no illusion about Fundamentalist Christianity. She despises it as much as you and I do, rc.
The following is an excerpt from her book Nomad: A Personal Journey Through The Clash Of Civilizations which I hope will be of interest to yourself and other contributors to the thread. It's rather longish but this woman is worth the trouble.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI
Better hung than the Archbishop of Canterbury
'The message of Nomad is clear and can be stated at the outset: The West urgently needs to compete with the jihadis, the proponents of a holy war, for the hearts and minds of its own Muslim immigrant populations.
It needs to provide education directed at breaking the spell of the infallible Prophet, to protect women from the oppressive dictates of the Quran, and to promote alternative sources of spirituality...
...All Muslims are reared to believe that Muhammad, the founder of their religion, was perfectly virtuous and that the moral strictures he left behind should never be questioned. The Quran, as “revealed” to Muhammad, is considered infallible: it is the true word of Allah, and all its commands must be obeyed without question. This makes Muslims vulnerable to indoctrination in a way that followers of other faiths are not. Moreover, the violence that is endemic in so many Muslim societies, ranging from domestic violence to the incessant celebration of holy war, adds to the difficulty of turning people from that world into Western citizens...
... The West tends to respond to the social failures of Muslim immigrants with what can be called the racism of low expectations. This Western attitude is based on the idea that people of color must be exempted from “normal” standards of behavior. A well-meaning class of people holds that minorities should not share all of the obligations that the majority must meet. In liberal, democratic countries the majorities are white and most minorities are people of color. But most Muslims, like all other immigrants, migrate to the West not to be locked up in a minority, but to search for a better life, one that is safe and predictable and that holds the prospect of a better income and the opportunity of a good quality education for their children. To achieve this, I believe, they must learn to give up some of their habits, dogmas, and practices and acquire new ones.
There are many good men and women in the West who try to resettle refugees, scold their fellow citizens for not doing more, donate money to philanthropic organizations, and strive to eliminate discrimination.
They lobby governments to exempt minorities from the standards of behavior of Western societies; they fight to help minorities preserve their cultures, and they excuse their religion from critical scrutiny. These people mean well, I have no doubt. But I believe that their well-intentioned activism is now a part of the very problem they seek to solve. To be blunt, their efforts to assist Muslims and other minorities are futile because, by postponing or at best prolonging the process of their transition to modernity—by creating the illusion that one can hold on to tribal norms and at the same time become a successful citizen—the proponents of multiculturalism lock subsequent generations born in the West into a no-man’s-land of moral values.
What comes packaged in a compassionate language of acceptance is really a cruel form of racism. And it is all the more cruel because it is expressed in sugary words of virtue.
I believe there are three institutions in Western society that could ease the transition into Western citizenship of these millions of nomads from the tribal cultures they are leaving. They are institutions that can compete with the agents of jihad for the hearts and minds of Muslims.
The first is public education. The European Enlightenment of the eighteenth century gave birth to schools and universities run on the principles of critical thinking. Education was aimed at helping the masses emancipate themselves from poverty, superstition, and tyranny through the development of their cognitive abilities. With the spread of democracy in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, access to such reason-based institutions steadily expanded. Children from all social backgrounds were taught not only math, geography, science, and the arts, but also the social skills and the discipline required to achieve success in the world beyond the classroom. Literature expanded and challenged their imaginations so that they could empathize with characters from other times and places. This public education was geared toward grooming citizens, not preserving the separateness of tribe, the sanctity of the faith, or whatever happened to be the prejudice of the day.
Today, however, many schools and campuses in the West have opted to be more “considerate” of the faith, customs, and habits of the immigrant students they find in their classrooms. Out of a misguided politeness they refrain from openly challenging the beliefs of Muslim children and their parents. Textbooks gloss over the fundamentally unjust rules of Islam and present it as a peaceful religion.
Institutions of reason must cast off these self-imposed blinkers and reinvest in developing the ability to think critically, no matter how impolite some people may find the results.
The second institution that can and must do more is the feminist movement. Western feminists should take on the plight of the Muslim woman and make it their own cause. Their aim should be to help the Muslim woman find her voice. Western feminists have a wealth of experience and resources at their disposal. There are three goals they must aspire to in helping their Muslim sisters. The first is to ensure that Muslim girls are free to complete their education; the second is to help them gain ownership of their own bodies and therefore their sexuality; and the third is to make sure that Muslim women have the opportunity not only to enter the workforce but also to stay in it.
Unlike Muslim women in Muslim countries and Western women in the past, Muslim women in the West face specific constraints imposed on them by their families and communities. It is not enough to classify their problems as “domestic violence”; they are domestic in practice but legal and cultural in nature. There should be campaigns dedicated to exposing the special circumstances and restrictions of Muslim women and the dangers they face in the West; to educate Muslim men on the importance of women’s emancipation and education and to punish them when they use violence; to protect Muslim women from physical harm.
The third and final institution I call on to rise to this challenge is the community of Christian churches. I myself have become an atheist, but I have encountered many Muslims who say they need a spiritual anchor in their lives. I have had the pleasure of meeting Christians whose concept of God is a far cry from Allah. Theirs is a reformed and partly secularized Christianity that could be a very useful ally in the battle against Islamic fanaticism. This modern Christian God is synonymous with love. His agents do not preach hatred, intolerance, and discord; this God is merciful, does not seek state power, and sees no competition with science. His followers view the Bible as a book full of parables, not direct commands to be obeyed. Right now, there are two extremes in Christianity, both of which are a liability to Western civilization. The first consists of those who damn the existence of other groups, They take the Bible literally and reject scientific explanations for the existence of man and nature in the name of “intelligent design.” Such fundamentalist Christian groups invest a lot of time and energy in converting people. But much of what they preach is at odds with the core principles of the Enlightenment. At the other extreme are those who would appease Islam—like the spiritual head of the Church of England, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who holds that the implementation of Shari’a in the UK is inevitable.
Those who adhere to a moderate, peaceful, reformed Christianity are not as active as the first group nor as vocal as the second. They should be. The Christianity of love and tolerance remains one of the West’s most powerful antidotes to the Islam of hate and intolerance.
Ex-Muslims find Jesus Christ to be a more attractive and humane figure than Muhammad, the founder of Islam.'
~o0o~
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littleCJelkton
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Was The Founder Of Islam A Paedophile?
I used this on another religious thread but it stands to this one too especially the last comandment; and thou shall try real hard not to kill any one unless they pray to a different invisible man than the one you pray to.
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Glaswegian
- Posts: 733
- Joined: Tue Nov 14, 2006 6:07 am
Was The Founder Of Islam A Paedophile?
littleCJelkton;1337909 wrote: I used this on another religious thread but it stands to this one too especially the last comandment; and thou shall try real hard not to kill any one unless they pray to a different invisible man than the one you pray to.
During the visit of Pope Benedict XVI to Glasgow last month, littleCJelkton, the Right Reverend William Connolly, Archbishop of Glasgow, shared his views on religion with a private audience. Here is some video footage of that memorable and uplifting event:
During the visit of Pope Benedict XVI to Glasgow last month, littleCJelkton, the Right Reverend William Connolly, Archbishop of Glasgow, shared his views on religion with a private audience. Here is some video footage of that memorable and uplifting event:
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littleCJelkton
- Posts: 1215
- Joined: Tue Jun 01, 2010 5:57 pm
Was The Founder Of Islam A Paedophile?
Glaswegian;1337919 wrote: During the visit of Pope Benedict XVI to Glasgow last month, littleCJelkton, the Right Reverend William Connolly, Archbishop of Glasgow, shared his views on religion with a private audience. Here is some video footage of that memorable and uplifting event:
one difference is that Carlin by making a joke on the old testiment is making fun of all religions that include them where as Connolly is mainly anti-muslim if your making fun of religious values you have to include all as they all include the same "Spooky Language" to get you to believe you have to do certain things to be happy "go to Heaven", "get 40 virgins", etcetera
one difference is that Carlin by making a joke on the old testiment is making fun of all religions that include them where as Connolly is mainly anti-muslim if your making fun of religious values you have to include all as they all include the same "Spooky Language" to get you to believe you have to do certain things to be happy "go to Heaven", "get 40 virgins", etcetera
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recovering conservative
- Posts: 529
- Joined: Sun Nov 02, 2008 12:28 pm
Was The Founder Of Islam A Paedophile?
Glaswegian;1337908 wrote: Ayaan Hirsi Ali is under no illusion about Fundamentalist Christianity. She despises it as much as you and I do, rc.
She has lots of illusions! First one being that it is impossible to establish and maintain a moderate form of Islam that can exist in harmony with other religions, yet for some reason she believes that Christianity does not also inevitably slide towards fundamentalism! Why not? Liberal churches are in decline in America, while the conservative, fundamentalist churches are the only ones growing in numbers. I'm sure she is aware of this now that she is living in the U.S.; but she is not going to call for abandoning Christianity as long as she is collecting cheques from A.E.I.
The following is an excerpt from her book Nomad: A Personal Journey Through The Clash Of Civilizations which I hope will be of interest to yourself and other contributors to the thread. It's rather longish but this woman is worth the trouble.
She is not worth my trouble, because she is a lying hypocrite to begin with. In brief, she received refugee status in the Netherlands under false pretences, including using a fake name and lied about the state of her marriage. This would not be so unpardonable on its own, if she wasn't also at the time, sitting in the Dutch Parliament as a member for a far right, anti-immigration party that advocated a zero tolerance policy of expulsion of refugee claimants, especially ones that are based on fraud! She is similar to Republican Tea Party candidates that rail against Mexican illegal immigrants, while at the same time, hiring illegals for cheap labor......the type of people that are now her political allies!
'The message of Nomad is clear and can be stated at the outset: The West urgently needs to compete with the jihadis, the proponents of a holy war, for the hearts and minds of its own Muslim immigrant populations.
And how does the West compete with jihad warriors? By telling them to abandon their religion and convert to some form of Christianity? I'd be interested to know whether she advocated this sort of position before moving to the U.S.; because it sounds conveniently like sucking up to religious right minions who will make up most of the targeted audience for this book.
Reform of any movement happens from within; not from patronizing outsiders telling a group what's good for them! Seems to me that Ayaan is a natural fit in the Neocon club; since they are all about "regime change" and other tactics of reform imposed from the outside.
It needs to provide education directed at breaking the spell of the infallible Prophet, to protect women from the oppressive dictates of the Quran, and to promote alternative sources of spirituality...
And this is why she cannot play a role in any real reform that goes on in Muslim communities. I recently came across an article about Muslim women who've formed a group called "Pray In" movement, which simply advocates that women be allowed the same rights of worship inside a mosque that the men are entitled to. It's a start to taking down culturally imposed barriers that marginalize women.....and it seems to be something that Ali has no interest in because she demands Islam be destroyed and Muslims either become atheists or Christians. Which solution has a chance of leading to reform, and which one leads to an even wider, bloody conflagration? You be the judge!
...All Muslims are reared to believe that Muhammad, the founder of their religion, was perfectly virtuous and that the moral strictures he left behind should never be questioned. The Quran, as “revealed” to Muhammad, is considered infallible: it is the true word of Allah, and all its commands must be obeyed without question. This makes Muslims vulnerable to indoctrination in a way that followers of other faiths are not. Moreover, the violence that is endemic in so many Muslim societies, ranging from domestic violence to the incessant celebration of holy war, adds to the difficulty of turning people from that world into Western citizens...
When she states:"all Muslims," can she say that with any authority? Or are her views confined to the religious practices that she grew up with in Somalia?
... The West tends to respond to the social failures of Muslim immigrants with what can be called the racism of low expectations. This Western attitude is based on the idea that people of color must be exempted from “normal” standards of behavior. A well-meaning class of people holds that minorities should not share all of the obligations that the majority must meet. In liberal, democratic countries the majorities are white and most minorities are people of color. But most Muslims, like all other immigrants, migrate to the West not to be locked up in a minority, but to search for a better life, one that is safe and predictable and that holds the prospect of a better income and the opportunity of a good quality education for their children. To achieve this, I believe, they must learn to give up some of their habits, dogmas, and practices and acquire new ones.
Here she paints tolerance as a bad thing, and intolerance and oppression are the proper attitudes towards outside foreign cultures. Liberals are getting used to being scapegoated for societal ills by conservatives who thrive on conflict and greed, so this sounds like more of the same! Is there anywhere in the book where she explains why her theories about the problems of Muslim immigrants don't seem to hold up in North America? In other words, if Muslims inevitably find themselves poor, uneducated, and isolated in the West, why does this seem to be the case only in Europe, and not in Canada or the United States -- where Muslims are in most places a little above the average in income and education levels? The Eurabia stories never seem to deal with the fact that Muslim immigrants in Europe faced a lot more open hostility and restrictions than in Canada or the U.S.
She has lots of illusions! First one being that it is impossible to establish and maintain a moderate form of Islam that can exist in harmony with other religions, yet for some reason she believes that Christianity does not also inevitably slide towards fundamentalism! Why not? Liberal churches are in decline in America, while the conservative, fundamentalist churches are the only ones growing in numbers. I'm sure she is aware of this now that she is living in the U.S.; but she is not going to call for abandoning Christianity as long as she is collecting cheques from A.E.I.
The following is an excerpt from her book Nomad: A Personal Journey Through The Clash Of Civilizations which I hope will be of interest to yourself and other contributors to the thread. It's rather longish but this woman is worth the trouble.
She is not worth my trouble, because she is a lying hypocrite to begin with. In brief, she received refugee status in the Netherlands under false pretences, including using a fake name and lied about the state of her marriage. This would not be so unpardonable on its own, if she wasn't also at the time, sitting in the Dutch Parliament as a member for a far right, anti-immigration party that advocated a zero tolerance policy of expulsion of refugee claimants, especially ones that are based on fraud! She is similar to Republican Tea Party candidates that rail against Mexican illegal immigrants, while at the same time, hiring illegals for cheap labor......the type of people that are now her political allies!
'The message of Nomad is clear and can be stated at the outset: The West urgently needs to compete with the jihadis, the proponents of a holy war, for the hearts and minds of its own Muslim immigrant populations.
And how does the West compete with jihad warriors? By telling them to abandon their religion and convert to some form of Christianity? I'd be interested to know whether she advocated this sort of position before moving to the U.S.; because it sounds conveniently like sucking up to religious right minions who will make up most of the targeted audience for this book.
Reform of any movement happens from within; not from patronizing outsiders telling a group what's good for them! Seems to me that Ayaan is a natural fit in the Neocon club; since they are all about "regime change" and other tactics of reform imposed from the outside.
It needs to provide education directed at breaking the spell of the infallible Prophet, to protect women from the oppressive dictates of the Quran, and to promote alternative sources of spirituality...
And this is why she cannot play a role in any real reform that goes on in Muslim communities. I recently came across an article about Muslim women who've formed a group called "Pray In" movement, which simply advocates that women be allowed the same rights of worship inside a mosque that the men are entitled to. It's a start to taking down culturally imposed barriers that marginalize women.....and it seems to be something that Ali has no interest in because she demands Islam be destroyed and Muslims either become atheists or Christians. Which solution has a chance of leading to reform, and which one leads to an even wider, bloody conflagration? You be the judge!
...All Muslims are reared to believe that Muhammad, the founder of their religion, was perfectly virtuous and that the moral strictures he left behind should never be questioned. The Quran, as “revealed” to Muhammad, is considered infallible: it is the true word of Allah, and all its commands must be obeyed without question. This makes Muslims vulnerable to indoctrination in a way that followers of other faiths are not. Moreover, the violence that is endemic in so many Muslim societies, ranging from domestic violence to the incessant celebration of holy war, adds to the difficulty of turning people from that world into Western citizens...
When she states:"all Muslims," can she say that with any authority? Or are her views confined to the religious practices that she grew up with in Somalia?
... The West tends to respond to the social failures of Muslim immigrants with what can be called the racism of low expectations. This Western attitude is based on the idea that people of color must be exempted from “normal” standards of behavior. A well-meaning class of people holds that minorities should not share all of the obligations that the majority must meet. In liberal, democratic countries the majorities are white and most minorities are people of color. But most Muslims, like all other immigrants, migrate to the West not to be locked up in a minority, but to search for a better life, one that is safe and predictable and that holds the prospect of a better income and the opportunity of a good quality education for their children. To achieve this, I believe, they must learn to give up some of their habits, dogmas, and practices and acquire new ones.
Here she paints tolerance as a bad thing, and intolerance and oppression are the proper attitudes towards outside foreign cultures. Liberals are getting used to being scapegoated for societal ills by conservatives who thrive on conflict and greed, so this sounds like more of the same! Is there anywhere in the book where she explains why her theories about the problems of Muslim immigrants don't seem to hold up in North America? In other words, if Muslims inevitably find themselves poor, uneducated, and isolated in the West, why does this seem to be the case only in Europe, and not in Canada or the United States -- where Muslims are in most places a little above the average in income and education levels? The Eurabia stories never seem to deal with the fact that Muslim immigrants in Europe faced a lot more open hostility and restrictions than in Canada or the U.S.
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Glaswegian
- Posts: 733
- Joined: Tue Nov 14, 2006 6:07 am
Was The Founder Of Islam A Paedophile?
recovering conservative wrote: She [Ayaan Hirsi Ali] is not worth my trouble, because she is a lying hypocrite to begin with. In brief, she received refugee status in the Netherlands under false pretences, including using a fake name and lied about the state of her marriage.
Yes. Ayaan Hirsi Ali lied about her name and age in order to gain political asylum in the Netherlands. She also lied about having arrived in the Netherlands directly from Somalia instead of via Kenya and Germany in order to speed up her asylum application. She admitted to these lies in several interviews she gave to the media in 2002. She also informed her political party, the VVD, about these lies before standing for election to the Dutch Parliament.
As for lying about the state of her marriage in order to gain asylum - Ayaan Hirsi Ali claims her father had promised her in marriage to a man in Canada whom she did not know. Since she had no wish to enter into this arranged marriage she eschewed it en route to Canada. This is what Ayaan Hirsi Ali claims. Some members of her family claim otherwise. I don’t know who is telling the truth on this matter. Do you?
recovering conservative wrote: This would not be so unpardonable on its own, if she wasn't also at the time, sitting in the Dutch Parliament as a member for a far right, anti-immigration party that advocated a zero tolerance policy of expulsion of refugee claimants, especially ones that are based on fraud!
Yes. This was hypocrisy on Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s part. She knew it. And so did her political party.
Clearly, Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a liar and a hypocrite in the above matters. And perhaps she is a liar and a hypocrite about other things as well. But she is certainly not alone in this respect. I, for one, am also a liar and a hypocrite - about not a few things. Given the fact that Ayaan Hirsi Ali and myself are liars and hypocrites about certain things - does this render our criticisms of Islam invalid? Of course not. What matters is whether or not these criticisms are based on reason and evidence.
recovering conservative wrote: Reform of any movement happens from within; not from patronizing outsiders telling a group what's good for them!
This view exemplifies the cultural relativism which has been bleated by a number of contributors to this thread. According to this view, all cultures are morally equivalent with no culture being morally higher than another in terms of its norms, mores, laws, customs and the behaviour of its members. Thus, the members of one culture have no right to pass moral judgement on another culture and its members because the latter are only acting in accordance with cultural norms.
As a moral position, cultural relativism is hypocritical. It is hypocritical because whenever an individual who adheres to it is horrified and outraged by, say, the gang-raping of a Muslim female as punishment for adultery or one who is murdered to preserve the ‘honour’ of some bearded patriarch, then that individual has already passed judgement in the privacy of his own heart on the culture which provides legitimacy for these brutal acts against females. Of course, this individual will proclaim to the entire world outside his skin that we mustn’t pass judgement on other cultures. But his emotions and physiology testify otherwise.
As a moral position, cultural relativism is also craven. ‘All cultures are morally equivalent, and our culture is no better than any other’, the cultural relativist simpers. ’Our culture has no right to impose its moral values and standards on any other culture. Our culture can only judge its own shortcomings.’ - so the sickly sweet refrain goes. This is nothing more than multiculturalist mush born of moral cowardice, white guilt and a fear of judging others. Like me, Ayaan Hirsi Ali has no time for this mealy-mouthed hypocrisy and self-deception. She writes:
‘Here is something I have learned the hard way, but which a lot of well-meaning people in the West have a hard time accepting: All human beings are equal, but all cultures and religions are not. A culture that celebrates femininity and considers women to be the masters of their own lives is better than a culture that mutilates girls’ genitals and confines them behind walls and veils or flogs or stones them for falling in love.
A culture that protects women’s rights by law is better than a culture in which a man can lawfully have four wives at once and women are denied alimony and half their inheritance. A culture that appoints women to its supreme court is better than a culture that declares that the testimony of a woman is worth half that of a man. It is part of Muslim culture to oppress women and part of all tribal cultures to institutionalize patronage, nepotism, and corruption. The culture of the Western Enlightenment is better.’ - Excerpted from Nomad: A Personal Journey Through The Clash Of Civilizations
~o0o~
Something has just occurred to me, rc.
Are you the Canadian man to whom Ayaan Hirsi Ali was promised in marriage? Are you the one she jilted and escaped from? Is this why you feel such animosity towards her? If so, then get over it.
Perhaps it will be of some consolation to you to know that had your marriage to her gone ahead it would have been doomed from the outset. Why? Because Ayaan Hirsi Ali prefers men with balls. Men like this:
GLASWEGIAN
Ready
(Image courtesy of Women of Reason Monthly)
~o0o~
Yes. Ayaan Hirsi Ali lied about her name and age in order to gain political asylum in the Netherlands. She also lied about having arrived in the Netherlands directly from Somalia instead of via Kenya and Germany in order to speed up her asylum application. She admitted to these lies in several interviews she gave to the media in 2002. She also informed her political party, the VVD, about these lies before standing for election to the Dutch Parliament.
As for lying about the state of her marriage in order to gain asylum - Ayaan Hirsi Ali claims her father had promised her in marriage to a man in Canada whom she did not know. Since she had no wish to enter into this arranged marriage she eschewed it en route to Canada. This is what Ayaan Hirsi Ali claims. Some members of her family claim otherwise. I don’t know who is telling the truth on this matter. Do you?
recovering conservative wrote: This would not be so unpardonable on its own, if she wasn't also at the time, sitting in the Dutch Parliament as a member for a far right, anti-immigration party that advocated a zero tolerance policy of expulsion of refugee claimants, especially ones that are based on fraud!
Yes. This was hypocrisy on Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s part. She knew it. And so did her political party.
Clearly, Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a liar and a hypocrite in the above matters. And perhaps she is a liar and a hypocrite about other things as well. But she is certainly not alone in this respect. I, for one, am also a liar and a hypocrite - about not a few things. Given the fact that Ayaan Hirsi Ali and myself are liars and hypocrites about certain things - does this render our criticisms of Islam invalid? Of course not. What matters is whether or not these criticisms are based on reason and evidence.
recovering conservative wrote: Reform of any movement happens from within; not from patronizing outsiders telling a group what's good for them!
This view exemplifies the cultural relativism which has been bleated by a number of contributors to this thread. According to this view, all cultures are morally equivalent with no culture being morally higher than another in terms of its norms, mores, laws, customs and the behaviour of its members. Thus, the members of one culture have no right to pass moral judgement on another culture and its members because the latter are only acting in accordance with cultural norms.
As a moral position, cultural relativism is hypocritical. It is hypocritical because whenever an individual who adheres to it is horrified and outraged by, say, the gang-raping of a Muslim female as punishment for adultery or one who is murdered to preserve the ‘honour’ of some bearded patriarch, then that individual has already passed judgement in the privacy of his own heart on the culture which provides legitimacy for these brutal acts against females. Of course, this individual will proclaim to the entire world outside his skin that we mustn’t pass judgement on other cultures. But his emotions and physiology testify otherwise.
As a moral position, cultural relativism is also craven. ‘All cultures are morally equivalent, and our culture is no better than any other’, the cultural relativist simpers. ’Our culture has no right to impose its moral values and standards on any other culture. Our culture can only judge its own shortcomings.’ - so the sickly sweet refrain goes. This is nothing more than multiculturalist mush born of moral cowardice, white guilt and a fear of judging others. Like me, Ayaan Hirsi Ali has no time for this mealy-mouthed hypocrisy and self-deception. She writes:
‘Here is something I have learned the hard way, but which a lot of well-meaning people in the West have a hard time accepting: All human beings are equal, but all cultures and religions are not. A culture that celebrates femininity and considers women to be the masters of their own lives is better than a culture that mutilates girls’ genitals and confines them behind walls and veils or flogs or stones them for falling in love.
A culture that protects women’s rights by law is better than a culture in which a man can lawfully have four wives at once and women are denied alimony and half their inheritance. A culture that appoints women to its supreme court is better than a culture that declares that the testimony of a woman is worth half that of a man. It is part of Muslim culture to oppress women and part of all tribal cultures to institutionalize patronage, nepotism, and corruption. The culture of the Western Enlightenment is better.’ - Excerpted from Nomad: A Personal Journey Through The Clash Of Civilizations
~o0o~
Something has just occurred to me, rc.
Are you the Canadian man to whom Ayaan Hirsi Ali was promised in marriage? Are you the one she jilted and escaped from? Is this why you feel such animosity towards her? If so, then get over it.
Perhaps it will be of some consolation to you to know that had your marriage to her gone ahead it would have been doomed from the outset. Why? Because Ayaan Hirsi Ali prefers men with balls. Men like this:
GLASWEGIAN
Ready
(Image courtesy of Women of Reason Monthly)
~o0o~
Was The Founder Of Islam A Paedophile?
Glaswegian;1338333 wrote:
Are you the Canadian man to whom Ayaan Hirsi Ali was promised in marriage? Are you the one she jilted and escaped from? Is this why you feel such animosity towards her? If so, then get over it.
Perhaps it will be of some consolation to you to know that had your marriage to her gone ahead it would have been doomed from the outset. Why? Because Ayaan Hirsi Ali prefers men with balls. Men like this:
GLASWEGIAN
Ready
(Image courtesy of Women of Reason Monthly)
~o0o~
Is this intended as a joke or has the thread just descended into farce?
Are you the Canadian man to whom Ayaan Hirsi Ali was promised in marriage? Are you the one she jilted and escaped from? Is this why you feel such animosity towards her? If so, then get over it.
Perhaps it will be of some consolation to you to know that had your marriage to her gone ahead it would have been doomed from the outset. Why? Because Ayaan Hirsi Ali prefers men with balls. Men like this:
GLASWEGIAN
Ready
(Image courtesy of Women of Reason Monthly)
~o0o~
Is this intended as a joke or has the thread just descended into farce?
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recovering conservative
- Posts: 529
- Joined: Sun Nov 02, 2008 12:28 pm
Was The Founder Of Islam A Paedophile?
Glaswegian;1338333 wrote: Yes. Ayaan Hirsi Ali lied about her name and age in order to gain political asylum in the Netherlands. She also lied about having arrived in the Netherlands directly from Somalia instead of via Kenya and Germany in order to speed up her asylum application. She admitted to these lies in several interviews she gave to the media in 2002. She also informed her political party, the VVD, about these lies before standing for election to the Dutch Parliament.
As for lying about the state of her marriage in order to gain asylum - Ayaan Hirsi Ali claims her father had promised her in marriage to a man in Canada whom she did not know. Since she had no wish to enter into this arranged marriage she eschewed it en route to Canada. This is what Ayaan Hirsi Ali claims. Some members of her family claim otherwise. I don’t know who is telling the truth on this matter. Do you?
Yes. This was hypocrisy on Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s part. She knew it. And so did her political party.
But you still haven't addressed the fact that she was a member of a political party that was trying to ban refugee claimants -- such as herself from entering or staying in Holland. Her hypocrisy that's most damning is the fact that she was willing to condemn other women from Somalia, or other Muslim nations to be deported if they did exactly as she had done!
Clearly, Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a liar and a hypocrite in the above matters. And perhaps she is a liar and a hypocrite about other things as well. But she is certainly not alone in this respect. I, for one, am also a liar and a hypocrite - about not a few things. Given the fact that Ayaan Hirsi Ali and myself are liars and hypocrites about certain things - does this render our criticisms of Islam invalid? Of course not. What matters is whether or not these criticisms are based on reason and evidence.
Your stupid idea of a personal attack is all I want to know about yourself! As for Ayaan's criticisms of Islam, I have addressed those directly. She has allowed herself to be used by a Neoconservative front group that is an active supporter of present U.S. occupations, and even wants a new war front opened -- with Iran.
This view exemplifies the cultural relativism which has been bleated by a number of contributors to this thread. According to this view, all cultures are morally equivalent with no culture being morally higher than another in terms of its norms, mores, laws, customs and the behaviour of its members. Thus, the members of one culture have no right to pass moral judgement on another culture and its members because the latter are only acting in accordance with cultural norms.
No one said anything about cultural relativism. That is just the phony charge from American and European exceptionalists who want to maintain the present Western dominance -- even though it is now hanging by a thread, and bankrupting Western nations! Ayaan Hirsi Ali cannot speak with authority about how Islam is practiced outside of the community that she was raised in -- and that's my biggest objection to her and your smearing of a complex collection of religious traditions that fall under the category of Islam. Christianity can't be summarized in simple sound bites; and no one who has even made a casual attempt to explore the different traditions in Islam believes that it all inevitably leads to some sort of fundamentalism. One thing we can be sure of, is that the inflammatory rhetoric about eradicating Islam, and hostility from warmongerers who have made Islam this generation's Red Menace, is what fuels militancy and fundamentalism on their side.
‘Here is something I have learned the hard way, but which a lot of well-meaning people in the West have a hard time accepting: All human beings are equal, but all cultures and religions are not.
And the cultures that are not equal just happen to have darker skins for some reason!
A culture that celebrates femininity and considers women to be the masters of their own lives
Where exactly is this culture? A lot of women don't seem to consider western pop culture as celebrating femininity, but instead seeks to exploit women for the value of their sexuality.
is better than a culture that mutilates girls’ genitals and confines them behind walls and veils or flogs or stones them for falling in love.
And all Muslim girls are circumcised, veiled and flogged! In America, this propaganda is usually spouted by the same guys who want to force girls to have a rapist's baby, instead of being allowed to have an abortion.
A culture that protects women’s rights by law is better than a culture in which a man can lawfully have four wives at once and women are denied alimony and half their inheritance. A culture that appoints women to its supreme court is better than a culture that declares that the testimony of a woman is worth half that of a man. It is part of Muslim culture to oppress women and part of all tribal cultures to institutionalize patronage, nepotism, and corruption. The culture of the Western Enlightenment is better.’ - Excerpted from Nomad: A Personal Journey Through The Clash Of Civilizations
No surprise that this is more drivel from Ali's latest book! She wants the culture and religion she grew up with to be eradicated and replaced with Western culture. If things improve in Muslim countries it will come from reform from within, not U.S. and Nato forces trying to impose their will on them, with the help of corrupt warlords and local officials. Yet this is the kind of tactic that advocates for. On Bill Maher's HBO show, she stated that the people in Afghanistan should be supporting the U.S. and Afghan Government forces against Taleban rebels. Just goes to show how little understanding she has of the situation there!
As for lying about the state of her marriage in order to gain asylum - Ayaan Hirsi Ali claims her father had promised her in marriage to a man in Canada whom she did not know. Since she had no wish to enter into this arranged marriage she eschewed it en route to Canada. This is what Ayaan Hirsi Ali claims. Some members of her family claim otherwise. I don’t know who is telling the truth on this matter. Do you?
Yes. This was hypocrisy on Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s part. She knew it. And so did her political party.
But you still haven't addressed the fact that she was a member of a political party that was trying to ban refugee claimants -- such as herself from entering or staying in Holland. Her hypocrisy that's most damning is the fact that she was willing to condemn other women from Somalia, or other Muslim nations to be deported if they did exactly as she had done!
Clearly, Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a liar and a hypocrite in the above matters. And perhaps she is a liar and a hypocrite about other things as well. But she is certainly not alone in this respect. I, for one, am also a liar and a hypocrite - about not a few things. Given the fact that Ayaan Hirsi Ali and myself are liars and hypocrites about certain things - does this render our criticisms of Islam invalid? Of course not. What matters is whether or not these criticisms are based on reason and evidence.
Your stupid idea of a personal attack is all I want to know about yourself! As for Ayaan's criticisms of Islam, I have addressed those directly. She has allowed herself to be used by a Neoconservative front group that is an active supporter of present U.S. occupations, and even wants a new war front opened -- with Iran.
This view exemplifies the cultural relativism which has been bleated by a number of contributors to this thread. According to this view, all cultures are morally equivalent with no culture being morally higher than another in terms of its norms, mores, laws, customs and the behaviour of its members. Thus, the members of one culture have no right to pass moral judgement on another culture and its members because the latter are only acting in accordance with cultural norms.
No one said anything about cultural relativism. That is just the phony charge from American and European exceptionalists who want to maintain the present Western dominance -- even though it is now hanging by a thread, and bankrupting Western nations! Ayaan Hirsi Ali cannot speak with authority about how Islam is practiced outside of the community that she was raised in -- and that's my biggest objection to her and your smearing of a complex collection of religious traditions that fall under the category of Islam. Christianity can't be summarized in simple sound bites; and no one who has even made a casual attempt to explore the different traditions in Islam believes that it all inevitably leads to some sort of fundamentalism. One thing we can be sure of, is that the inflammatory rhetoric about eradicating Islam, and hostility from warmongerers who have made Islam this generation's Red Menace, is what fuels militancy and fundamentalism on their side.
‘Here is something I have learned the hard way, but which a lot of well-meaning people in the West have a hard time accepting: All human beings are equal, but all cultures and religions are not.
And the cultures that are not equal just happen to have darker skins for some reason!
A culture that celebrates femininity and considers women to be the masters of their own lives
Where exactly is this culture? A lot of women don't seem to consider western pop culture as celebrating femininity, but instead seeks to exploit women for the value of their sexuality.
is better than a culture that mutilates girls’ genitals and confines them behind walls and veils or flogs or stones them for falling in love.
And all Muslim girls are circumcised, veiled and flogged! In America, this propaganda is usually spouted by the same guys who want to force girls to have a rapist's baby, instead of being allowed to have an abortion.
A culture that protects women’s rights by law is better than a culture in which a man can lawfully have four wives at once and women are denied alimony and half their inheritance. A culture that appoints women to its supreme court is better than a culture that declares that the testimony of a woman is worth half that of a man. It is part of Muslim culture to oppress women and part of all tribal cultures to institutionalize patronage, nepotism, and corruption. The culture of the Western Enlightenment is better.’ - Excerpted from Nomad: A Personal Journey Through The Clash Of Civilizations
No surprise that this is more drivel from Ali's latest book! She wants the culture and religion she grew up with to be eradicated and replaced with Western culture. If things improve in Muslim countries it will come from reform from within, not U.S. and Nato forces trying to impose their will on them, with the help of corrupt warlords and local officials. Yet this is the kind of tactic that advocates for. On Bill Maher's HBO show, she stated that the people in Afghanistan should be supporting the U.S. and Afghan Government forces against Taleban rebels. Just goes to show how little understanding she has of the situation there!
Was The Founder Of Islam A Paedophile?
Well, whether or not Muhammad was a pedophile, there's little doubt he was a terrorist, highwayman, and thief. he says so himself many times.
I found this website fascinating as it describes his many crimes in the name of "peace." Any time mohammed wanted to rob, steal, or plunder, he got one of his "visions" it seems...
Prophet of Terror and the Religion of Peace--Part I
I found this website fascinating as it describes his many crimes in the name of "peace." Any time mohammed wanted to rob, steal, or plunder, he got one of his "visions" it seems...
Prophet of Terror and the Religion of Peace--Part I
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Glaswegian
- Posts: 733
- Joined: Tue Nov 14, 2006 6:07 am
Was The Founder Of Islam A Paedophile?
gmc;1335657 wrote: To apply 21st century mores to the founder of islam and accuse him of being a paedophile is absurd. What is even more absurd is that we find ourselves even debating whether the attitudes of a stone age religion have any relevance in the 21st century. Our society moves on and people accept they are free and realise they have to accept the rights and lives of others as being of equal value whether we approve of them or not. But we have the adherents of a bronze age religion hanging round our necks always trying to turn the clock back.
In the above you state: 'Our society moves on and people accept they are free and realise they have to accept the rights and lives of others as being of equal value whether we approve of them or not.'
Why do you persist in simpering this cultural relativist nonsense, gmc? Our society would not move on a single nano-moral-metre if we accepted ‘the rights and lives of others as being of equal value whether we approve of them or not’. It would remain locked in a state of perpetual moral paralysis.
In the real world - which is to say, the world outside of your cultural relativist fantasy - cultures make moral judgements about other cultures and find them wanting. One can deny it until one is blue in the face but the fact of the matter is this - certain forms of behaviour found in some cultures are just not good enough. This process of moral appraisal does not only occur between cultures. It occurs within them as well. It is this process - of appraising, judging and condemning - which makes moral progress possible.
The following article provides an example of this very process occurring within the culture of Scotland, gmc. Read it and disabuse yourself of your fantasy.
http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/crim ... -1.1058618
In the above article, Nicola Sturgeon, Deputy First Minister of Scotland states:
“Forced marriage has no place in 21st-century Scotland. We know people who refuse are often subjected to threats, assault, captivity or worse at the hands of their own family. This important bill will help confine this abusive behaviour to history, providing flexible legal support to allow victims to take control and get their lives back on track. Scotland is leading the way in ensuring that anyone who flouts a protection order – and anyone aiding or abetting them – will feel the full force of the law.”
The message is as clear as an azure sky. Forced marriage - an institution which operates widely within primitive cultures such as the Islamic one - is not morally acceptable in present-day Scotland. The secular-humanist culture of Scotland has judged this particular form of cultural behaviour to be abusive and archaic, and this judgement has been made even though it might offend the moral sensibilties of members of certain subcultural groups who wish to practice it and, yes, even the moral sensibility of someone like yourself, gmc. This is what is called: ‘Taking a moral stand’. This is what is called: ‘Passing judgement without fear’. This is what is called: ‘Having a pair’.
~o0o~
Nicola Sturgeon: Deputy First Minister of Scotland
Better hung than gmc
(Photo courtesy of Alex Salmond Private Collection)
~o0o~
In the above you state: 'Our society moves on and people accept they are free and realise they have to accept the rights and lives of others as being of equal value whether we approve of them or not.'
Why do you persist in simpering this cultural relativist nonsense, gmc? Our society would not move on a single nano-moral-metre if we accepted ‘the rights and lives of others as being of equal value whether we approve of them or not’. It would remain locked in a state of perpetual moral paralysis.
In the real world - which is to say, the world outside of your cultural relativist fantasy - cultures make moral judgements about other cultures and find them wanting. One can deny it until one is blue in the face but the fact of the matter is this - certain forms of behaviour found in some cultures are just not good enough. This process of moral appraisal does not only occur between cultures. It occurs within them as well. It is this process - of appraising, judging and condemning - which makes moral progress possible.
The following article provides an example of this very process occurring within the culture of Scotland, gmc. Read it and disabuse yourself of your fantasy.
http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/crim ... -1.1058618
In the above article, Nicola Sturgeon, Deputy First Minister of Scotland states:
“Forced marriage has no place in 21st-century Scotland. We know people who refuse are often subjected to threats, assault, captivity or worse at the hands of their own family. This important bill will help confine this abusive behaviour to history, providing flexible legal support to allow victims to take control and get their lives back on track. Scotland is leading the way in ensuring that anyone who flouts a protection order – and anyone aiding or abetting them – will feel the full force of the law.”
The message is as clear as an azure sky. Forced marriage - an institution which operates widely within primitive cultures such as the Islamic one - is not morally acceptable in present-day Scotland. The secular-humanist culture of Scotland has judged this particular form of cultural behaviour to be abusive and archaic, and this judgement has been made even though it might offend the moral sensibilties of members of certain subcultural groups who wish to practice it and, yes, even the moral sensibility of someone like yourself, gmc. This is what is called: ‘Taking a moral stand’. This is what is called: ‘Passing judgement without fear’. This is what is called: ‘Having a pair’.
~o0o~
Nicola Sturgeon: Deputy First Minister of Scotland
Better hung than gmc
(Photo courtesy of Alex Salmond Private Collection)
~o0o~
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Glaswegian
- Posts: 733
- Joined: Tue Nov 14, 2006 6:07 am
Was The Founder Of Islam A Paedophile?
Saint_;1338383 wrote: Any time mohammed wanted to rob, steal, or plunder, he got one of his "visions" it seems...
Likewise when he wanted to 'grease his pole', Saint.
Likewise when he wanted to 'grease his pole', Saint.