Totem wrote:
"Sharia has nothing to do with Islam. Islam is just a prop for control." --Smash
As is Sharia. The law is the Muzzie version of the good ol' boy network, misogynist in nature, explicitly and implicitly, and the prop for the control of women and by extension, their families. I suspect it'd shock the West speechless as to how much mental, sexual, emotional, and psychological abuse goes on in Muslim families that is generated by Sharian law and the mindset that it embodies.
Totem
As is Sharia. The law is the Muzzie version of the good ol' boy network, misogynist in nature, explicitly and implicitly, and the prop for the control of women and by extension, their families. I suspect it'd shock the West speechless as to how much mental, sexual, emotional, and psychological abuse goes on in Muslim families that is generated by Sharian law and the mindset that it embodies.
Totem
Yep, been there, done that, a long time ago.
It took a compulsory semester on Islam and Middle-Eastern studies to realise just how much prejudice and animosity I had for the whole culture, stemming from all my knowledge of the BAD stuff in it. I was utterly shocked with myself, because my parents had particularly raised me to avoid prejudice. Finding out some of the merits and glories of Muslim culture gave me some much needed balance.
That doesn't take away from the things that I still regard as inherent evils in the culture.
Quote:
think it'd shock the West to realize that there isn't demonstrably more abuse in Muslim families than in Christian or Agnostic ones.
I wouldn't be surprised that there wasn't more general physical abuse in Muslim families. And the cultural emphasis on family togetherness and loyalty often leads to beautifully close familial relationships and mutually beneficial support. But there remains a big problem with Honour killings in several Muslim countries. This is a particularly cruel and distasteful phenomenon. Honour killings are when brothers, fathers and/or uncles of a woman kill her if she has been raped, if she has had sex before being married, if she has an extra-marital affair, or in some cases, if she has been alone with a man, for example, if she has been alone in a car with a man who is not related to her.
Female genital mutilation is often thought of as exclusively Muslim, but it's actually more a geographical region thing, with families of all religions in the same geographical regions of Africa and the Middle-East practising it.
I'm pretty sure that there is a cultural lag thing going on. Western society pre the Industrial Revolution has extremely similar rules to Sharia and any other forien rules that look hideously restrictive today. I think that the material certainty and comfort from industrialisation, and the benefits of technological progress gave us the very opportunity to relax our social rules, give everyone more rights and freedoms. The organisation of national armies and national police forces (both things that came from increasing prosperity) allowed the concept of one law for all, and more certain safety, which in turn accelerated individual freedoms.
The West industrialised and became more materially comfortable first...a long way first. Now the rest of the continents have played catch up on the prosperity (Africa lagging from serious disease issues), and I'm pretty sure that even without globalisation, given the same length time of material prosperity, other countries and cultures would come into quite similar legal and cultural mores when it comes to personal freedoms. The time-frame I'm looking at here is about 500 years.
Given that we DO have globalisation, I think that time-frame will be greatly accelerated, especailly in countries as soon as they free up their media.
Edited, May 15th 2008 2:39pm by Aripyanfar
Edited, May 15th 2008 5:27pm by Aripyanfar
