Printable View
Here.Quote:
Dozens of men reportedly pelted the 13-year-old Aisha Ibrahim Duhulow with rocks in a stadium packed with 1,000 spectators in Kismayo.
Amnesty International said the Islamic militia in charge of the city had accused her of adultery after she reported that three men had raped her.
Initial reports said Duhulow was 23, but her father told Amnesty that she was just 13
This thread is now for debating why Islam is no worse than Christianity.
Go.
I am one of the (apparently) few Western atheists who grew up a Christianity but who is not bigoted against it. I would never say that Christianity is "worse" than Islam.
seconded.Quote:
Originally Posted by sycld
Extreme Islam is worse then extreme Christianity ever was.
Or rather, I'm should say instead that I for one am going to refrain from comparing and ranking religions based on how "bad" or "good" they are.Quote:
Originally Posted by Sion
But I will qualify that by saying... there's just something different about Islam when compared to the modern forms of other religions, and I don't know if it's merely the contemporary Islamic culture or if it's something inherent to the religion.
Go Amnesty International!
Islam in some countries is simmilar to that of medieval christian Europe. In Europe, common sense has gave christianity a bit of a kicking, the same cannot be said for Islam in parts of the Middle East.Quote:
Originally Posted by sycld
Yeah, I don't buy this argument for a number of reasons.Quote:
Originally Posted by gismo
Let me address the argument as commonly stated: "Islam is in its 'medieval' phase, just as Christianity was some 500+ years ago."
First of all, the Middle Ages are undeservedly maligned, seeing as the true roots of Western civilization came out of the Middle Ages and not any earlier period of time, and the developments of the Renaissance were just a natural off-growth of Medieval thought and not sudden and disjointed return to Classical thought whatsoever as some people have tried to revise history to reflect.
Secondly, Islam is not a new religion. It is around 1300 years old, and unlike Christianity, it did not take nearly as long for Islam to mature and gain hegemony.
Finally, humanization has been a global force and liberty has spread throughout the globe. Its adoption has not been merely national or even regional. All nations and regions have tried to resist it to larger or lesser degrees, and its influence is felt to different degrees in different places, but I would argue that you can find the strongest holdouts in terms of resisting humanization and liberalism for any other reason aside from pure greed or tyranny in Islamic nations. Even in liberal nations, and even among many (though not all) of the more educated followers, Muslims vigorously resist adoption of more moderate forms of their religion, unlike followers of any other religion. Why is this? I can't help but believe that there is something different about Islam, and again I cannot tell if it is something to do with simply its contemporary culture or if it's something intrinsic to the religion.
I am not saying it is in its medieval stage, I am comparing it to what european christians were like many centuries ago. You put the argument as if I was suggesting some kind of natural cycle of things, I am not. Back then christians were very, very opposed to "moderate" forms of religion, often to the extent of murder, just like some muslims in the present day. The middle east is largly backwards, like Europe used to be. I don't think there is anything especially different about Islam, freedom of thought managed to battle it out and I suppose win in Europe, such things haven't happened to the same extent in the Middle East and I don't think Islam as it is causes this soley. I think if christianity was adopted in such regions and all else remained the same, it would still be a backwards place with insane crimes being commited in gods name.
America is so good at criticising and destroying a culture that is thousands of years older than she is.
Westerners like ourselves cannot judge a culture like this which has completely different values.
Sure we think it's wrong.
It IS wrong. Those people are so assbackwards about stuff like that. If anyone tried that shit here, theyd be locked up in an asylum.
You do realise that all us westerners are completely wrong according to Somalis right?Quote:
Originally Posted by amac211
Wow. I'd love to see what they'd do to the desperate housewives.
Being older doesn't make it righter. Just because something is part of someone elses culture doesn't make it right, just because in another part of the world x is ok, doesn't make it right. The way rape victims are treated in some Islamic states is disgusting. I don't care what they believe about sexuality, they are fucking wrong.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dr. Baltar
I remember seeing a documentary about a 16 year old Iranian girl, who was publically hanged for crimes against chastity, after she got raped. This is a shocking way to treat people, it is wrong, and I am within my rights to comdemn those who think it is ok. Such ways of life are backwards.
She was probably wearing a slutty looking cheerleader outfit and had it coming.
Well, you're acting as though democracy and liberalism are only restricted to Western nations. The fact is that nowadays the movement towards democracy and liberalism is a global movement. Nearly every nation on Earth has been pressured to at least give lip service to these ideals, and nations as diverse and far-flung as India, Japan, South Africa, Argentina, and Mali have either achieved very democratic and liberal government or are truly striving to do so.Quote:
Originally Posted by gismo
The Middle East is the only region of the world with such uniformly strong resistance to modern ideals and such strong and cohesive movements to retain the archaic institutions and values that oppose liberalism and democracy. All this is because of the embrace of fundamentalist Islam.
As a matter of comparison, let's look at India versus Pakistan. Until 1947, India was a unified colony under the British. Thanks to that bastard Jinnah and Gandhi's willingness to bend to his demands, Pakistan became a separate republic from India especially for all of the subcontinent's Muslims. Most of India's Muslims moved up to Pakistan, and most of Pakistan's non-Muslims moved to India. It involved the displacement of 17.9 million people, the largest and fastest transfer of people in human history.
Now let's see how each of these states evolved. India is strongly democratic and strongly secular, with a great deal of respect for human rights, though of course there are large human rights problems that still persist. Nonetheless, even villagers have a sense of empowerment and use the political leverage afforded to them by the government to benefit themselves and their community. In addition, liberal thought and tolerance is radiating out from the urban centers and finding its way into the more rural parts of India. And, as always, people of all religions, both Hindu and non-Hindu alike, more or less live next to each other in peace.
On the other hand, Pakistan's movement for democracy has never really gotten off the ground. The central government cannot really exercise control over the population, much of which is militant and fundamentalist, and the western part of the state has become a safe haven for the Taliban. The central courts routinely and unselfconsciously make audacious decisions that flagrantly violate human rights with little or no explanation given except that it is what is demanded of Islam (according to them, anyways.)
Why is Pakistan, which is ~97% Muslim, so different from India, which is ~80.5% Hindu?
stoning women for showing too much skin and for being gang raped is RIGHT?Quote:
Originally Posted by Dr. Baltar
Please be aware of how ignorant that post made you look.
It's only right if people with brown skin do it, because they don't "know any better."Quote:
Originally Posted by Sion
Aren't you a self-proclaimed homophobe?Quote:
Originally Posted by Sion
uhh looks like i stumbled in to wrong thread
so? homosexuality is a sin WORTH killing people over, but bearing too much skin or GETTING gang raped?Quote:
Originally Posted by TheOriginalGrumpySpy
Thats just fucked up.
/irony
Please read my post again.Quote:
Originally Posted by Sion
Not once in that post did I say that I thought it was right.
I ust said that according to Islamic law it is right.
And in my opinion, western society has no right whatsoever to interfere with an outside culture.
Sure we can criticise, sure we can say it is wrong, but at the end of the day this is nothing but culture.
Ha, ha, ha, ha!Quote:
Originally Posted by Sion
I don't think ANY sins short of murder and child molestation are worth killing over.
According to Islamic law, killing you for not being a Muslim is right.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dr. Baltar
Where's you cultural equivalence argument now?
Quote:
Originally Posted by sycld
Actually, good points.
Europe used to be like the middle east in regards to opposition to progress, but something changed and the power of the church lessened. What was it about Europe that allowed for this? Was christianity more accomodating for progressive change than Islam? That maybe. Was it something cultural in Europe that allowed for it? Maybe. I think there might be a bit of both, but I think we can both agree that Islam doesn't come out of this looking too good. What we were essentially debating was how crippling an influence Islam was, I wasn't too sure that it was Islam alone...but...
And Dr Baltar, we are not interfering, check the news, there is nothing about a bunch of internet geeks making attempts to change muslim culture, because all we are doing is criticising. Call it caulture all you want, but it is fair to prepend it with barbaric or backwards, because the way humans are treated in some of those countries, especially women, is just horrific. It doesn't matter if Islam justifies it, all this proves that Islam is wrong when it comes to treating human beings.
Does anybody happen to know the population in these Islamic countries, and if there are more men than women? A lot of the time these large inaccuracies of logic in regard to how to treat the opposite sex are (if not formed out of) solidified by a gender NUMBERS inequality. To support my argument, the women's movement in the U.S. took place after WWII, when the amount of men was down because we'd just been through a war, and the Spartans (yes those guys from the movie 300, only not.) women had a great amount of rights for their time, because as babies women are healthier, so there were more women then men. It's a question of dyadic and structural power, and it repeats throughout history.
I'm not saying what happened is right (I think it's sick), but just offering up an idea. Also, I hope that people see the ideals that these people hold as wrong, and not necessarily the person. Too often they become intermixed, and that's when there's crusades to clean up the 'dirt of the earth' type of stuff.
Why do you keep referring to Europe? In the past, what made the rest of the word any better or worse than Europe, and why do you act like it's only Europe that has become democratized and liberal?Quote:
Originally Posted by gismo
This kind of cultural subjectivism is not only lazy, it's dangerous. If cultural relativism is the correct way to view the world, then we had no business interfering during WWII, Amnesty International is an immoral organization, and the UN ought to be disbanded.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dr. Baltar
Stoning a woman is either right or it is wrong. Saying that one nation views it as okay and another doesn't is not a worthwhile contribution to any argument. Ethical relativism tells us that our moral attitudes are only feelings instead of reasoning, that moral disagreement cannot exist (when we see every day that it does). On the contrary, if a nation is killing its own people but that nation views this as morally correct, they are right about it or they are wrong. It cannot be both, and it cannot be neither.
We may not always be morally correct in our reasoning, but that hardly means that the reasoning isn't important.
As I said Sole, Dr. Baltar prolly thinks that morality is only relative for brown and black people. If these people had white skin but were from a different culture, then morality stops being relative.
sycld, I don't know what Baltar's extended feelings are on moral relativism, but I am not calling him a racist or implying that he views Western morals as objective but "brown" morals as relative. That would be a confusing stance, to be sure.
Rather, what I mean is that a lot of these "moral relativists" have an easier time with morals being different from their own among people that look different from themselves. When it comes to people that look like themselves, then suddenly that stance of moral relativism gets thrown out the window. That's all.Quote:
Originally Posted by solecistic
we need AI back.
If this were in AI, then this thread would have been filled with more stupid than it is even now.Quote:
Originally Posted by Sion
That's what I said.Quote:
Originally Posted by solecistic
OOOOOOOH SNAP!Quote:
Originally Posted by Hippocrass
fix'd.
She being Aisha Ibrahim Duhulow.
/tasteless, stupid joke
sycld loses because pakistan isnt in the middle east
Somalia isn't in the Middle East either. I was discussing Islamic states in general, even though I referred to the Middle East in particular. I wasn't being clear enough.Quote:
Originally Posted by raghead
I don't think only Europe is democratized. I mention Europe mainly because once upon a time religion had a very serious hold there, but eventually the grips of religion weakened, and over the centuries great change occured, they expanded into other parts of the world, founded America etc. I am only mentioning it because I think it is the best example of a continent/area going from derranged by religion to an area that is ruled by liberal democracies.Quote:
Originally Posted by sycld
Many Islamic states have become derranged by their religion, in the same way Europe once was. I hope that clears that up.
I'm just going to be frank--Quote:
Originally Posted by gismo
What a silly thing to say. Though I'm certainly no great scholar of history, you're just revealing your own lack of knowledge.
As I said, the Middle Ages are undeservedly maligned. The Renaissance and all history that followed was a natural development of the Middle Ages and not a return to Classical thought.
Also, it's silly to think that Medieval Europe was somehow so much worse than the rest of the world.
but interfering with outside cultures is a staple of my culture! how dare you take away my right to interfere!Quote:
Originally Posted by Dr. Baltar
as sole said, this cultural relativism is dangerous, but it only takes the smallest bit of thinking through to realise that it's also incoherent.
You really should study your history more...Quote:
Originally Posted by Sion
Here's a starter.
[ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crusade"]Crusades - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia@@AMEPARAM@@/wiki/File:SiegeofAntioch.jpeg" class="image"><img alt="" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d3/SiegeofAntioch.jpeg/220px-SiegeofAntioch.jpeg"@@AMEPARAM@@commons/thumb/d/d3/SiegeofAntioch.jpeg/220px-SiegeofAntioch.jpeg[/ame]
Have fun!
I'm not talking in numbers, I'm talking in barbaricity.Quote:
Originally Posted by Kage_
If Islam had the POWER to crusade the western world, do you honestly think that they would pass that chance by in favor of greater peace?
The crusades killed people for being of opposing relegious belief, fabricated offenses, and for minor offenses.
Islam is killing people of opposing relegious belief, for fabricated offenses and for miniscule offenses, on top of killing people for the way they dress.
Tomatoes and Oranges bro, but when it comes down to it, they're both acidic as fuck.
I will be frank, none of us have a clue what you are even on about now. I won't waste my time with you.Quote:
Originally Posted by sycld
And a note on the crusades, be assured that the crusaders went under the guide of holy war, they might have used religion as a justification but in reality this was all about material self betterment. The crusaders killed people in Asia minor because the crusaders wanted their land. And in the latter crusaders, all pretence of religion were thrown out of the window.
Speak for yourself. He's perfectly easy to understand.Quote:
Originally Posted by gismo
Lets not forget all those 13 year old girls the crusaders killed for being raped.Quote:
Originally Posted by gismo
Of course they DID share the ulterior motive of world domination...Quote:
Originally Posted by Hippocrass
but...
You may also find these enlightening:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/inquisition
Children's Crusade - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia@@AMEPARAM@@/wiki/File:Gustave_dore_crusades_the_childrens_crusade.j pg" class="image"><img alt="" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/ed/Gustave_dore_crusades_the_childrens_crusade.jpg/220px-Gustave_dore_crusades_the_childrens_crusade.jpg"@@ AMEPARAM@@commons/thumb/e/ed/Gustave_dore_crusades_the_childrens_crusade.jpg/220px-Gustave_dore_crusades_the_childrens_crusade.jpg
I apologise for not having the time to come back to this thread, but still, I stand by my previous opinion:
The morals of other cultures differ from our own and I don't believe that we have any right to interfere with somethign that does not concern us.
So we have no right to interfere when other cultures engage in genocide?
that's good, the way you thought to vindicate your previous statements by waiting a long time then repeating them without elaboration.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dr. Baltar