On January 26 2012 12:57 Abort Retry Fail wrote: Seriously, how many here are muslims and have read the Quran? Can we please stop arguing if we don't know anything about it?
Some people say Islam us a violent religion and despise jews and women. Others say it is a religion of peace.
We need quotes from Quran to prove this and have a discussion.
Let me just shamelessly quote myself from a discussion on page 6 with a guy from Yemen who never responded:
I'm talking crap eh, let me give you a few Qu'ran quotes, it's a terrible and boring book and I can't blame you for not reading it.
-On the befriending non muslims:
Qur'an (5:51) - "O you who believe! do not take the Jews and the Christians for friends; they are friends of each other; and whoever amongst you takes them for a friend, then surely he is one of them; surely Allah does not guide the unjust people."
Qur'an (5:80) - "You will see many of them befriending those who disbelieve; certainly evil is that which their souls have sent before for them, that Allah became displeased with them and in chastisement shall they abide." Those Muslims who befriend unbelievers will abide in hell. (there is more if you'd like)
-He married Aisha when she was 6, he fucked her when she was 9, it's pretty clear you don't know shit about the religion your talking about: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aisha If you honestly think that at 9 she was mature enough to have sex, get your head checked. She might have been important to the religion after the 'prophet' raped her for years, that's not something that's relevant to this argument.
-http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/04/opinion/martyrs-virgins-and-grapes.html According to the NYT it's grapes, I'm willing to entertain your sex slave theory as well though. But if you think that we should we be so free about our sexuality, why does the Islam only profess this for men? Women need to wear their rediculous shrouds, women are heavily persecuted if they cheat, their word can not be taken seriously in a court of law (which is where one would prove the cheating) and women DO NOT get 40 male sex slaves. Just sounds like Muhammad was a massive pervert.
-I never said female circumcision was in the Qu'ran, just that it was a cultural habit for muslims, only making the point that westerners did'nt do it even in our past, read my points before responding please.
-Muhammad, during his conquests (he was a warlord, i.e. raper and murderer, remember?) would at numerous times murder out the entire cat and dog population of his lands because they where unclean, read your history, and the Hadith's contain numerous quotes like this:
Hadith - Bukhari 3:515, Narrated Abu Huraira
I heard Allah's Apostle saying; "Angels (of Mercy) do not enter a house wherein there is a dog or a picture of a living creature (a human being or an animal)."
I find it amusing how you accuse me of not knowing my history when you just repeat the politically correct nonsense they tell you on television. Hope for you your not actually a muslim because Allah would definitely smite you for not knowing your own religion.
Some other things to note was that Muhammad, whenever he would undergo a vision he would start shaking violently and foam would come from his mouth, i.e. epilepsy. And the guy had red hair and light skin, most likely eastern European or from India, where men will die their hair red out of tradition. And Muhammad was never capable of writing, much like the Bible, we are not always certain who wrote the Qu'ran, we just know it has changed inbetween translations and copy's and to suit a specific rulers desires, much like the Bible and Tora. The religious concensus is that the Qu'ran has never been changed, it's even officially forbidden to translate it (Muhammad was a bit paranoid when it came to writing, drawing and singing, i.e. he banned most forms of it), the Arabic language however was not invented yet and most likely Aramaic or Assyrian was used, moreover, Muhammad was illiterate, so he was incapable of writing himself and even the question of when it was written is hard to answer as like with the Bible being edited and compiled by the Romans to suit their needs and the Tora by the Babylonian era Jews, it is very likely that the Caliphate has been the one to compile the final edition.
Oh and when it comes to muslims and the Qu'ran, it is important to realize most muslims have never and will never read the Qu'ran, it's in ancient arabic due to the whole translation being a sin clause, so their knowledge of the Qu'ran generally comes from what their Imams want them to know, so if they go to a peaceful mosque in a relatively stable country they will assume it's filled with love and rules about keeping yourself clean, if you live in Iraq or Indonesia though they will fill the people will all the bile and crap about killing and oppressing the book has to offer.
You take quotes completely out of context. The things you quote in the Quran are referencing particular events. The Quran has been translated MANY TIMES http://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/Quran-English-Translation?store=ALLPRODUCTS&keyword=Quran English Translation . The thing with Muslims is that they clarify the difference between a translation and an authentic copy because as anyone who knows more than one language knows, things get lost in translation. Islam has an official language, Arabic. The Quran is best expressed in its original language, Arabic. The Arabic Quran is seen by Muslims as the Word of God (not the creation of God), whereas translations are seen as man made. I have no idea where you got the idea that Arabic didnt exist. The original is sitting in the Topkapı Palace in Turkey: http://www.islamic-awareness.org/Quran/Text/Mss/topkapi.html Google: Topkapı Palace, Quran. This is the first result. Muhammad may have not been able to write, but he could speak and he had friends that could write. It's why it's tradition among Muslims to memorize the Quran. They have competitions broadcast on TV for it.
I was born and raised in the USA. I have lived in the Middle East. I have studied Islam in school. The issues you have are just completely wrong. The fact that you think that Arabic didn't exist at origin of Islam shows that you know nothing of how the Quran was compiled. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Arabic_alphabet
Every Quran I have opened around the world and read in Arabic is exactly the same. The issues of religion being practiced differently is completely cultural and political. In Islamic schools in the US, I was taught Evolution (Surprise we got there before the public school system). However, in certain Mideast countries, it's not taught in schools no matter if it's secular or religious. http://www.cracked.com/article_18911_5-ridiculous-things-you-probably-believe-about-islam_p2.html
The way you talk about Imams, you talk about them the same way a sainthood works in Christianity which doesn't exist in Sunni Islam.
But I suppose nothing I say matters because I'm just one of those women that wears ridiculous 'shrouds.'
On January 27 2012 13:31 Scootaloo wrote: How did I take the quotes out of context? Doing some quick reading around the 5:50 mark it seems to well in context, the rest of the text just being more rules about treating religious people and what one has to do to get on Allah's good side, my quoting of 5:51 was accurate.
When I speak of context. I mean historical context. The Quran was revealed in parts and in response to a lot of the events that were going at the time. These verses were revealed when Muslim's had just lost the Battle of Uhud and the surrounding tribes saw this as weakness. At the time, the Muslims had particular problems with the Jews living in Medina. That threatened the security of not only the Muslims, but the rest of the city. This was a time of war with some of the tribes of Mecca and the Muslims. Mecca, being the city that Muslims had been driven out of because they were getting persecuted. Medina is the city they were invited to after a censuses was reached that they would be willing to accept Muslims and many people there had already accepted Islam. These verses are referring to specific Jews and specific Christians of that time. Specifically, the Jewish tribe of Banu Nadir of Medina was believed to be plotting to kill the Prophet Muhammad. There were a lot of political issues going on at the time. That's what those verses are referring to.
So when I speak about context of the Quran, it's learning what each verse is in response to which historical event. Muslims are allowed to marry Christians and Jews. They are allowed to eat from the food that they prepare. Original Sharia Law (not current Sharia law practiced in some Mid East countries) provided laws for protecting the rights of Christians and Jews in a Muslim government.
On January 27 2012 13:31 Scootaloo wrote: I know the Qu'ran has been translated many times, I'm just using the most used and easily accessible varieties because we're having a discussion and I do not read Arabic, I've seen multiple translations of several passages and the changes are not that great, there are ofcourse the occasional hard to translate word because current Qu'ran scholars don't even know exactly what they mean, which is a language problem from when it was first translated, but I'll get to that later, most of the Qu'ran is pretty easily understood and the translations don't differ that much, if you want to present different translations to my chosen verses, well, I don't understand why you havn't already.
The translation issue is what lead to Uthman, the third Caliph, declaring that the Quran would only be official in Arabic. Uthman was a close friend of Prophet Muhammad when he was still alive and at this time. So all the translated copies of the time were rounded up, burnt, and copies of the Arabic version were distributed.
As for Quran scholars, they've had it figured it for ages. You can't be a Quran scholar without being fluent in Arabic. The Arabic of the Quran is written in 'Fus-ha' Arabic, which is generally looked at as the 'written' form of Arabic. Whereas when you hear someone speaking Arabic, it'll differ based on which region you live in, similar to how different areas of the US and Canada have different lingo or accents. However written Arabic is what you're taught in school. A lot of the children television programs are in Fus-ha Arabic because it encourages the language that children will read in and it's more universal. Arab countries are small and so lots of media is broadcast to more than one nation. So keeping it in the written language that every Arab understands is a lot more convenient and appeals to larger audience.
If you're talking about the Quran being translated from one language into Arabic, then you're just wrong because Arabic is the Original language of the Quran. Now if you're talking about how the Quran's letters physically look different now. That's another topic.
On January 27 2012 13:31 Scootaloo wrote: If your a Qu'ran scholar you probably know of the 'weird' words pop up in the Qu'ran occasionaly, and the missing of vowels in old versions of the text? (From what I read these spelling changes are considered known and not a problem) What other language do you know of that lacks vowels? And what was the Lingua Franca of the Mecca area? Syro-Aramaic, the Qu'ran was passed on orally in Syro-Aramaic and most likely written down by people native to that language or written down in Syro-Aramaic itself, have a link. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Syro-Aramaic_Reading_of_the_Koran
So that brings me to the issue of vowels. Just to put it out there. A lot of modern Arabic text in the middle east is not written with vowels because a native Arabic speaker does not need them in order properly read and understand Arabic. Those little tick marks that represent the vowels were added in to make it easier for people who were new to Arabic to read the Quran. The way Arabic is structured is that if you read a sentence, based on the grammatical structure of the sentence, you will know how to read that sentence and how every word is pronounced. Basically, the pronunciation of Arabic with or without those marks is the same. The word is still the same word. So while Luxenberg may argue that it's different. To Arabs, it's all the same. It's why this hasn't caused much of an issue in the east and in the Muslim community. We know about the evolution of the language, but a lot of Arabs still read Arabic without the vowels.
As for the Sana's manuscripts. They're just parts of the original. Why would I care for that when I have a near complete copy in Turkey? The Sana's scripts are from Yemen. My location is Jordan/Palestine :p
On January 27 2012 13:31 Scootaloo wrote: The reason why you won't hear anything about it is because it has some rather nasty implications for the Qu'ran. Did you ever wonder why the Qu'ran is so segmented and like the Bible or the Tora is divided into clear segments, different styles of writing, occasionaly holds contradictory statements and has numbers to index the entire thing? What we know from the creation of the Tora and the Bible is that they where collections of stories going around during those days, in the case of the Bible this has been recorded because the Romans where pretty cool guys, in the Tora's case it was a certain king who used it as a way to keep his people together when they where being shipped off to different parts of the world by the Babylonians. And in the same fashion the Qu'ran was created, from a ton of versions going around at that time, compiled to fit the purpose of creating the religion that the people who survived after the prophet wanted it to be.
I go to a Catholic university in the US and I have had to learn about the compilation of the Bible and Tora. The Quran was treated much differently. Any contradictory statements in the Quran are people not understanding that historical context that I was referring to earlier. If you didn't know that those verses earlier were referring to a certain political situation, it would seem contradictory that the Quran would later tell Muslims to marry Christians and Jews. If the Quran, was as you said compiled from different things and agreed upon then why don't Muslims have things like the Gospel of Mary or rejected chapters floating around? Why is it that every sect of Islam uses the same Quran and we don't have a different Quran for Hannafi or Shafi Muslims? http://www.islam101.com/quran/preservedQ.htm
On January 27 2012 13:31 Scootaloo wrote: And Arabic did not properly exist when the Qu'ran was created, apart from the fact that Muhammads people did not speak it because it was not native to their region, the only versions of arabic that existed where in proto-form and native to the region your nametag says your from, classic Arabic was created specifically for writing down the Qu'ran, most likely when Muhammad was already dead.
refer to above explanation of how Arabic has changed and how it doesn't affect anything
On January 27 2012 13:31 Scootaloo wrote: In Islam it's a lot easier to become a saint then in Christianity, for all intents and purposes it is more useful to refer to a Imam as an equivelant of a Catholic Priest, as they perform roughly the same functions, and I don't think I ever alluded to Imams as Saints.
The issue with Sainthood vs being an Imam is that Sainthood implies a type of divinity whereas being an Imam doesn't. In current context, an Imam just leads a Mosque. Whereas a scholar would be the one to issue a ruling. Scholars, again, not divine, but they are there to debate.
On January 27 2012 13:31 Scootaloo wrote: Mind you my problem with Hijabs and such is not as much how it looks as it's implications, the relevant part of the Qu'ran states that women must cover themselves to avoid men losing control of themselves and because they are shameless whores otherwise, equaling humans to beasts that lack any form of self control, and nowhere in the Qu'ran does it state anything similar for men, just women, who, according to the Qu'ran are PROPERTY of the man.
And I'm an atheist remember? Unlike a muslim I will take your opinion just as seriously as I would that of a man.
Oh, thank God. I thought I was dealing with all the Muslim men who have been imprisoning and oppressing me all my life. SAVE ME!! (sarcasm). I love my Muslim men. Man, people think Muslim women have it bad. I don't even want to think about how it would feel if people thought you were abusing your wife or daughter.
So before you bring it up and this will be fun to discuss based on what we've talked about. The main verse that non-Arabic speakers use to talk about Women being the property of Men in Islam is: (4:34) Men are in charge of women by what Allah has given one over the other and what they spend from their wealth.
The reason why this will be fun to talk about because I will have to clear up translation errors in this, which has been a nice topic for the two of us. "Men are in charge of women" Translation error. Where the English says 'in charge,' there is an Arabic word that has no direct translation into English. Men are qawamuun of women. This word has a lot of implications. The easiest way to explain it would be that it is asking men to protect, honor, and take care of women. It is demanding chivalry from men in dealing with women. When I was in Islamic school a simple act of this was that the boys never allowed me to sit on the floor. They would always bring me a chair and the issue was sometimes, I wanted to sit on the floor. I was pretty comfortable. I mean I know a chair is generally seen as better than the floor, but sometimes you just want to do want you want to do.
As for the second part concerning a woman taking from a man's wealth. This is pretty important because a woman's own wealth in Islam is considered her own and any she gives to her husband is considered a form of charity, whereas, with a Man's wealth, giving it to his wife is considered his duty. That being said, a lot of the gender roles in Islam are considered guidelines rather than 'Your husband-wife relationship MUST be this way' because a woman can be the bread winner of the family and it would be pretty bad if she didn't contribute to the family. Khadijah, Prophet Muhammad's first wife, married before prophethood and died during it, was the breadwinner. She actually was the one that initiated the relationship with Muhammad and ask him to marry her. (and people think it's liberal when a woman proposes to a man today ;>.>)
As for the Hijab, the main verse goes like this: “O Prophet, tell your wives and your daughters and the women of the believers to draw their cloaks close round them (when they go abroad). That will be better, so that they may be recognised and not annoyed. Allah is ever Forgiving, Merciful.” (Quran 33:59)
Hijab is mostly for the woman than it is for the man. I love wearing hijab for a few reasons: 1) It identifies me as Muslim. I live in the United States. It's important that when I'm at work and in school where people may have misconceptions about Muslims that they know that the girl who's playing StarCraft in the game lab, making jokes, and pulling off great animation pieces is Muslim. This is because I have a personality. I wasn't abused and in reality my parents pushed me to go far in life and even once encouraged me to go leave the house for college, believing that it would teach me more independence.
2) Personal reasons on what I think of the image of women in society. Fact of the matter is, I don't like that women are objectified. I don't support women being displayed half naked in malls. To some women, that's part of sexual equality and it's the man's fault for taking women that way. I, however, believe that it goes both ways and don't even support that image of men. I won't shout from the rooftops that I think that people need to look at female equality differently because women still debate among themselves about what it means to be equal with a man and will always debate that. Me wearing a hijab is me showing my stance but not being in your face about it. It passively promotes my idea. If you like it, great. If you don't, I'll move on with my life.
3) Wearing hijab isn't about being a whore or not being a whore. It's one part of the religion. I've seen just because you do 'X' amount of things that are required by your religion doesn't mean that you're a good person and doesn't mean that you're actually religious. There are women who wear hijab with tight clothing. There are women who don't wear hijab and who aren't even Muslim who dress very modestly.
Hijab is more than about sex. It's about representing just one of the many images of woman.
But I suppose nothing I say matters because I'm just one of those women that wears ridiculous 'shrouds.'
I have no idea where that came from. But there's nothing sexist about what he's been saying, so I'm rather confused. Why would he disregard you because you are a woman that wears a certain type of clothing? It's rather insulting that you would say that to him.
He said that Muslims made women wear ridiculous shrouds in a previous post. I was calling him out on it because I didn't like that he referred to something that I particularly enjoy as ridiculous or 'shroud' like. Also, I find it insulting that he thinks I come from a background where my opinion isn't respected and heard. So he said it all first. I am correcting his misconceptions.
Edit 2: Looks like he edited it out already, but for context, DoubleReed, I was referring to something he specifically said.
i would never try to impose my opinion on others, but i reject religious symbols in today's society whole heartedly. everyone can believe whatever they want and practise whatever they want but flaunting it in public is not a solution. Thus, i reject people who wear giant crosses or stars or nikab/burka.
On January 27 2012 15:35 brokor wrote: i would never try to impose my opinion on others, but i reject religious symbols in today's society whole heartedly. everyone can believe whatever they want and practise whatever they want but flaunting it in public is not a solution. Thus, i reject people who wear giant crosses or stars or nikab/burka.
People should be able to wear whatever they want in my opinion. I find it wrong when people are discriminated against because of the way they choose to dress. If someone likes to wear a hijab/burka, they should be able to do so. That said I see why a burka might be undesirable due to security or work related reasons.
It is wrong, however, when people are under pressure to wear certain things. Dressing "immodestly" is still dangerous for women in many places.
If we're talking about sexism specifically the Bible is pretty bad as well, the Ten Commandments might not hold too much overly sexist things but the the book is filled with sexist quotes, let me give a couple:
1 Corinthians 11:3
3 But I would have you know, that the head of every man is Christ; and the head of the woman [is] the man; and the head of Christ [is] God.
1 Corinthians 11:7 - 9*
7 For a man indeed ought not to cover [his] head, forasmuch as he is the image and glory of God: but the woman is the glory of the man. 8 For the man is not of the woman; but the woman of the man. 9 Neither was the man created for the woman; but the woman for the man.
Ephesians 5:22 - 25*
22 Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord. 23 For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is the saviour of the body. 24 Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so [let] the wives [be] to their own husbands in every thing. 25 Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it;
There's a lot more but I think I made my point.
The simple fact is that the behavioral differences (which I might add are not that great if left untouched by culture, most of them have to do with hormones, the brains of men and women are almost identical) between the sexes often lead to a patriarchal society, there have been matriarchal societies but because the patriarchal ones (sadly enough) tend to be more inclined to conquering they often eventually wiped out or assimilated matriarchal ones.
This is important in understanding the background most monotheistic ideas of God came from. The Tora, and it's "Sequels", the Bible and Qu'ran, draw heavily from mythology much older then their own creation, the sun God veneration of Ra, the Greek Mythras and creation myths, Persian mysticism and various other smaller cults that where active in the region at that time.
All of these, including the religions we're discussing where created in patriarchal societies, that usually only acknowledge a female prophet or seer in extreme hardships (i.e. Jeanne D'Arc), the messages these male prophets get tends to be based on their imagination and worldview, and growing up in a heavily patriarchal society will make you say dumb shit like women being property of men or a woman being of lesser value then a man.
Even in a religious context this could still work, the Vatican has acknowledged these other similar prophets and religions as precursors to their beliefs, earlier attempts by God to teach humanity or signs of what was to come, I suspect the Jews did the same, Judaism is by far the most mystic of the Abrahamic religions, and unlike Christianity and especially Islam it promotes freedom of thinking, I've not read anything specifically about Islam on this matter either but I have no doubt the more progressive, free-thinking, secular Muslims like LittleAtari have drawn similar conclusions already.
Now, on to my personal views, I believe most prophets where either afflicted with mental diseases such as Epilepsy in the case of Muhammad, under the influence of Shamanistic drugs for Moses, or in the case of Jesus either never existed, the first person to actually write about Jesus was the apostle Paul (please don't say the gospels where written by the original Matthew and such, check wiki before starting a discussion about that plz) and as any Christian knows Paul was never there at the Last Supper and had never seen Jesus, his conversion was roughly 30 years after Jesus supposed death, he was an Aramaic working for the Roman legions and while murdering a Christian, he was converted by a vision he had, or Jesus was a man who might have done a couple of what was considered miracles and had a lot of extra myths, from religions in that region, attached onto him most likely after his death, during the creation of the Bible we know today by the Romans, there are numerous Gospels that deal with things such as Jesus conversing in great detail with animals or the Gospel of Judas (that was most likely not written by the actual Judas).
I believe all three religions where created in a concious effort by people specifically out to control masses, the Bible by a Roman Council, the Tora by a Jewish king and his advisors and the Qu'ran by the descendants and friends of Muhammad, all essentially compilations of religious myths before them with a bit of new dogmatism attached, to create the most suitable religion to hold together an empire spanning far more land than could be reasonably ruled from a single location at that time.
Consider how the Bible and Qu'ran shamelessly rip of their prequels, and even the Tora blatantly rips off regional religions before itself, all the strange religions humanity has had have updated themselves or died out according to what was needed, the static religions we have now are a fairly new concept only brought on by the fact that our human ingenuity gave us the ability to forge empires, a written language and the means of copying, before that all religions where like infertile mutant offspring, dying off when it's host culture got destroyed, only surviving as ancients myths through oral tradition.
Even religion itself progresses through stages of evolution, until, when sufficient secularism has been reached and people have little life threatening things to worry about, it eventually dies out. Europe, bastion of religion for centuries, slowly becoming more and more atheist as general wealth and technological progress grows, the wealthy part of South East Asia (China, Japan, Korea and possibly Thailand), same story, America is a lot younger, but even there atheism is pretty well accepted, and perhaps when it's government will stop fearmongering this will grow again, secular wealthy countries like Turkey work the same, even the Ottomans where relatively secular until the very end, Jannisaries alone are in clear violation of the Qu'ran, and it was their obsession with Islam that made them eventually fall into stagnation as they refused to accept scientific progress and got crushed and divided in the First World War.
The only thing that would be able to create relative comfort for the entire world is scientific progress, feed and house everyone, replace destructive governments, root out religious militants and any other major threat to the human conciousness, if we can create this state before our host empires collapse I believe this civilization can honestly be the first one to not eventually get destroyed through usual means (war, regional scale natural disasters, leaders incompetence), and through our blissfull relative comfort, humanity will entirely lose it's need for religion, until eventually we're on the bridge of an S-Class Starcruiser with a bald British Guy playing a French guy and we'll laugh about our forefathers mutilating and murdering eachother for anything else then Space Diamonds.
Edit: Oh god I finish this and you respond, if you don't mind I'll postpone the continuation of our discussion until tomorrow LittleAtari, it's getting quite interesting but sleep is a rather important comodity.
On January 27 2012 15:35 brokor wrote: i would never try to impose my opinion on others, but i reject religious symbols in today's society whole heartedly. everyone can believe whatever they want and practise whatever they want but flaunting it in public is not a solution. Thus, i reject people who wear giant crosses or stars or nikab/burka.
People should be able to wear whatever they want in my opinion. I find it wrong when people are looked down upon for their outer appearance. If someone likes to wear a hijab/burka, they should be able to do so. That said I see why a burka might be undesirable due to security or work related reasons.
It is wrong, however, when people are under pressure to wear certain things. Dressing "immodestly" is still dangerous for women in many places.
Such as the alleys of any city in the western world at night. Dressing "immodestly" is a risk factor for sexual assault by strangers.
On January 27 2012 15:35 brokor wrote: i would never try to impose my opinion on others, but i reject religious symbols in today's society whole heartedly. everyone can believe whatever they want and practise whatever they want but flaunting it in public is not a solution. Thus, i reject people who wear giant crosses or stars or nikab/burka.
People should be able to wear whatever they want in my opinion. I find it wrong when people are looked down upon for their outer appearance. If someone likes to wear a hijab/burka, they should be able to do so. That said I see why a burka might be undesirable due to security or work related reasons.
It is wrong, however, when people are under pressure to wear certain things. Dressing "immodestly" is still dangerous for women in many places.
Such as the alleys of any city in the western world at night. Dressing "immodestly" is a risk factor for sexual assault by strangers.
There is no statistical evidence that it is a risk factor. Also only a few percent of sexual assaults are perpetrated by strangers.
I daresay that a lot of women in Germany feel safe on the streets at night no matter how they are dressed.
@Scootaloo, do you care to elaborate what do you mean by saying that the Romans created the Bible? I guess you are right in a sense that the bishops at the time were already Roman citizens but if you are implying that Roman authorities handed the Bible to Christians that is a theory I have not heard before. Even then, the texts that got into the official canon (there were several canons circulating with about the same texts) of the New Testament were already pretty widely recognized and read in parishes. Only few texts like Revelations caused controversy if they should be included or not.
If you are referring to the fact that the emperor called forth the first synods, which of course is a bit problematic for the Catholic church, I think your conclusion is still quite far-fetched to say the least.
On January 27 2012 15:35 brokor wrote: i would never try to impose my opinion on others, but i reject religious symbols in today's society whole heartedly. everyone can believe whatever they want and practise whatever they want but flaunting it in public is not a solution. Thus, i reject people who wear giant crosses or stars or nikab/burka.
People should be able to wear whatever they want in my opinion. I find it wrong when people are looked down upon for their outer appearance. If someone likes to wear a hijab/burka, they should be able to do so. That said I see why a burka might be undesirable due to security or work related reasons.
It is wrong, however, when people are under pressure to wear certain things. Dressing "immodestly" is still dangerous for women in many places.
Such as the alleys of any city in the western world at night. Dressing "immodestly" is a risk factor for sexual assault by strangers.
There is no statistical evidence that it is a risk factor. Also only a few percent of sexual assaults are perpetrated by strangers.
I daresay that a lot of women in Germany feel safe on the streets at night no matter how they are dressed.
Most statistics point to women being sexually assaulted by people. In which case, I think a lot more is going on there than just how they dressed (It probably didn't matter at all)
@scootaloo, you really don't need to waste time on me. I've lived my religion and studied it. You read off of wikipedia and translations. I read the original article written by scholars and the Quran in Arabic. You're not going to convince me of anything else. It's like someone who reads about starcraft vs actually playing the game. I don't have time to go back and forth with you and I'm pretty sure most religion threads end up locked, so I'll discontinue talking about the issue. I'm done and have got stuff to do. If you're genuinely curious about my views on certain issues, I'll discuss them via PM on my own time. I'll be off TL a few days. See you later bro. I see you're new to TL, so welcome to the site o/ ps. I'm far from secular.
On January 27 2012 15:35 brokor wrote: i would never try to impose my opinion on others, but i reject religious symbols in today's society whole heartedly. everyone can believe whatever they want and practise whatever they want but flaunting it in public is not a solution. Thus, i reject people who wear giant crosses or stars or nikab/burka.
People should be able to wear whatever they want in my opinion. I find it wrong when people are looked down upon for their outer appearance. If someone likes to wear a hijab/burka, they should be able to do so. That said I see why a burka might be undesirable due to security or work related reasons.
It is wrong, however, when people are under pressure to wear certain things. Dressing "immodestly" is still dangerous for women in many places.
Such as the alleys of any city in the western world at night. Dressing "immodestly" is a risk factor for sexual assault by strangers.
One of the greatest warpings of the truth is how rape is portrayed.
Rape is almost exclusively committed by people that the victim knows.
The #1 person most likely to rape you? The husband. The husband also doesn't face any punishment for raping his wife because the majority of countries do not consider a man forcing sex on his wife as rape.
Dressing "immodestly" has never shown to have any relation to rape.
This is in response to all those who criticize religion in this thread. I agree with you, but with a different reason. This was shared to me by an atheist friend and I agree with it 100%. The video expresses my view as well on how cultural/societal influences on religion are what cause most of the issues being argued about here.
Not meant as a evangelistic post, but as info to those who do have not studied the bible outside of theological scholastics. And hopefully this applies to Islam and other religions as well. Also, just so ppl know, I'm not a Christian.
On January 27 2012 17:34 zalz wrote:The #1 person most likely to rape you? The husband. The husband also doesn't face any punishment for raping his wife because the majority of countries do not consider a man forcing sex on his wife as rape.
While you're on the right track, this statement is false. Most rape in Western society is acquaintance rape where one or both parties are intoxicated.
On January 27 2012 17:34 zalz wrote:The #1 person most likely to rape you? The husband. The husband also doesn't face any punishment for raping his wife because the majority of countries do not consider a man forcing sex on his wife as rape.
While you're on the right track, this statement is false. Most rape in Western society is acquaintance rape where one or both parties are intoxicated.
When did we agree that rape stops being rape past western boundaries?
I even mentioned the husband being immune to persecution. You can be arrested for raping your wife in western countries.
So my very post already contains references to regions outside the western world. So why you suddenly decide to exclude that and pretend like I made the mistake? I don't know. You can explain how you drew that conclusion.
On January 27 2012 16:07 Scootaloo wrote: If we're talking about sexism specifically the Bible is pretty bad as well, the Ten Commandments might not hold too much overly sexist things but the the book is filled with sexist quotes, let me give a couple:
1 Corinthians 11:3
3 But I would have you know, that the head of every man is Christ; and the head of the woman [is] the man; and the head of Christ [is] God.
1 Corinthians 11:7 - 9*
7 For a man indeed ought not to cover [his] head, forasmuch as he is the image and glory of God: but the woman is the glory of the man. 8 For the man is not of the woman; but the woman of the man. 9 Neither was the man created for the woman; but the woman for the man.
Ephesians 5:22 - 25*
22 Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord. 23 For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is the saviour of the body. 24 Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so [let] the wives [be] to their own husbands in every thing. 25 Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it;
There's a lot more but I think I made my point.
The simple fact is that the behavioral differences (which I might add are not that great if left untouched by culture, most of them have to do with hormones, the brains of men and women are almost identical) between the sexes often lead to a patriarchal society, there have been matriarchal societies but because the patriarchal ones (sadly enough) tend to be more inclined to conquering they often eventually wiped out or assimilated matriarchal ones.
This is important in understanding the background most monotheistic ideas of God came from. The Tora, and it's "Sequels", the Bible and Qu'ran, draw heavily from mythology much older then their own creation, the sun God veneration of Ra, the Greek Mythras and creation myths, Persian mysticism and various other smaller cults that where active in the region at that time.
All of these, including the religions we're discussing where created in patriarchal societies, that usually only acknowledge a female prophet or seer in extreme hardships (i.e. Jeanne D'Arc), the messages these male prophets get tends to be based on their imagination and worldview, and growing up in a heavily patriarchal society will make you say dumb shit like women being property of men or a woman being of lesser value then a man.
Even in a religious context this could still work, the Vatican has acknowledged these other similar prophets and religions as precursors to their beliefs, earlier attempts by God to teach humanity or signs of what was to come, I suspect the Jews did the same, Judaism is by far the most mystic of the Abrahamic religions, and unlike Christianity and especially Islam it promotes freedom of thinking, I've not read anything specifically about Islam on this matter either but I have no doubt the more progressive, free-thinking, secular Muslims like LittleAtari have drawn similar conclusions already.
Now, on to my personal views, I believe most prophets where either afflicted with mental diseases such as Epilepsy in the case of Muhammad, under the influence of Shamanistic drugs for Moses, or in the case of Jesus either never existed, the first person to actually write about Jesus was the apostle Paul (please don't say the gospels where written by the original Matthew and such, check wiki before starting a discussion about that plz) and as any Christian knows Paul was never there at the Last Supper and had never seen Jesus, his conversion was roughly 30 years after Jesus supposed death, he was an Aramaic working for the Roman legions and while murdering a Christian, he was converted by a vision he had, or Jesus was a man who might have done a couple of what was considered miracles and had a lot of extra myths, from religions in that region, attached onto him most likely after his death, during the creation of the Bible we know today by the Romans, there are numerous Gospels that deal with things such as Jesus conversing in great detail with animals or the Gospel of Judas (that was most likely not written by the actual Judas).
I believe all three religions where created in a concious effort by people specifically out to control masses, the Bible by a Roman Council, the Tora by a Jewish king and his advisors and the Qu'ran by the descendants and friends of Muhammad, all essentially compilations of religious myths before them with a bit of new dogmatism attached, to create the most suitable religion to hold together an empire spanning far more land than could be reasonably ruled from a single location at that time.
Consider how the Bible and Qu'ran shamelessly rip of their prequels, and even the Tora blatantly rips off regional religions before itself, all the strange religions humanity has had have updated themselves or died out according to what was needed, the static religions we have now are a fairly new concept only brought on by the fact that our human ingenuity gave us the ability to forge empires, a written language and the means of copying, before that all religions where like infertile mutant offspring, dying off when it's host culture got destroyed, only surviving as ancients myths through oral tradition.
Even religion itself progresses through stages of evolution, until, when sufficient secularism has been reached and people have little life threatening things to worry about, it eventually dies out. Europe, bastion of religion for centuries, slowly becoming more and more atheist as general wealth and technological progress grows, the wealthy part of South East Asia (China, Japan, Korea and possibly Thailand), same story, America is a lot younger, but even there atheism is pretty well accepted, and perhaps when it's government will stop fearmongering this will grow again, secular wealthy countries like Turkey work the same, even the Ottomans where relatively secular until the very end, Jannisaries alone are in clear violation of the Qu'ran, and it was their obsession with Islam that made them eventually fall into stagnation as they refused to accept scientific progress and got crushed and divided in the First World War.
The only thing that would be able to create relative comfort for the entire world is scientific progress, feed and house everyone, replace destructive governments, root out religious militants and any other major threat to the human conciousness, if we can create this state before our host empires collapse I believe this civilization can honestly be the first one to not eventually get destroyed through usual means (war, regional scale natural disasters, leaders incompetence), and through our blissfull relative comfort, humanity will entirely lose it's need for religion, until eventually we're on the bridge of an S-Class Starcruiser with a bald British Guy playing a French guy and we'll laugh about our forefathers mutilating and murdering eachother for anything else then Space Diamonds.
Edit: Oh god I finish this and you respond, if you don't mind I'll postpone the continuation of our discussion until tomorrow LittleAtari, it's getting quite interesting but sleep is a rather important comodity.
On January 27 2012 15:35 brokor wrote: i would never try to impose my opinion on others, but i reject religious symbols in today's society whole heartedly. everyone can believe whatever they want and practise whatever they want but flaunting it in public is not a solution. Thus, i reject people who wear giant crosses or stars or nikab/burka.
People should be able to wear whatever they want in my opinion. I find it wrong when people are looked down upon for their outer appearance. If someone likes to wear a hijab/burka, they should be able to do so. That said I see why a burka might be undesirable due to security or work related reasons.
It is wrong, however, when people are under pressure to wear certain things. Dressing "immodestly" is still dangerous for women in many places.
Such as the alleys of any city in the western world at night. Dressing "immodestly" is a risk factor for sexual assault by strangers.
One of the greatest warpings of the truth is how rape is portrayed.
Rape is almost exclusively committed by people that the victim knows.
The #1 person most likely to rape you? The husband. The husband also doesn't face any punishment for raping his wife because the majority of countries do not consider a man forcing sex on his wife as rape.
Dressing "immodestly" has never shown to have any relation to rape.
Which is why I included the qualifier "by strangers".
Last time I checked, a husband, aquaintance, friend, brother, father, uncle, etc, etc, is not a stranger.
At any rate, stranger rape is a quarter of forcible rapes. (I'm not including "agreeing to sex while drunk and regretting it the next morning", "he threatened to break up with me if we didn't have sex", "I changed my mind during the sex but was too scared to tell him to stop", "my body language was saying yes, I didn't say no, but I never explicitly said "fuck me"" as rape.)
Of those stranger rapes, a significant amount is motivated in whole or part by the perception that the victim was a slut, and therefore deserved it. Guess what contributes to the perception that a particular woman is a slut.
By the way zalz, if a woman has sex against her will, in countries were marital rape is not a crime, she was not raped, because in her jurisdiction, she gave consent to vaginal sex to her husband in perpetuity when she said "I do".
On January 27 2012 20:43 vetinari wrote:Which is why I included the qualifier "by strangers".
Last time I checked, a husband, aquaintance, friend, brother, father, uncle, etc, etc, is not a stranger.
At any rate, stranger rape is a quarter of forcible rapes. (I'm not including "agreeing to sex while drunk and regretting it the next morning", "he threatened to break up with me if we didn't have sex", "I changed my mind during the sex but was too scared to tell him to stop", "my body language was saying yes, I didn't say no, but I never explicitly said "fuck me"" as rape.)
Of those stranger rapes, a significant amount is motivated in whole or part by the perception that the victim was a slut, and therefore deserved it. Guess what contributes to the perception that a particular woman is a slut.
Humans retro-actively write their memory. People can create memories after the event. They raped a person, they have to justify it for themselves because nobody wants to view themselves as evil, so they call her a slut to justify their actions whilst during the act itself, they were never motivated by such perceptions.
But I would still like a link to a stastic that shows that "The perception that she was a slut" is a main motivator of rape. It's not something that I ever came across but if you have some evidence that I missed, by all means, share it.
By the way zalz, if a woman has sex against her will, in countries were marital rape is not a crime, she was not raped, because in her jurisdiction, she gave consent to vaginal sex to her husband in perpetuity when she said "I do".
She was still raped because rape is forced sex.
I don't care that a bunch of medieval dictators pass a law that says it's not rape.
North-Korea can call itself a democracy all it likes, it's not. Saudi-Arabia can say that forcing sex on your wife is fine, it's still rape.
On January 27 2012 18:05 zalz wrote:So my very post already contains references to regions outside the western world. So why you suddenly decide to exclude that and pretend like I made the mistake? I don't know. You can explain how you drew that conclusion.
There is little to no reliable detailed criminological data on rape outside the Western world. I invite you to correct me by providing any sort of data to corroborate your assertions.
You admit an understanding that marital rape is not recognized in many socieites. What makes you think there would be any reliable incidence of rape reporting in those societies?
In other words, I call BS. Your assertion that marital rape is the most common is unsubstantiated.
On January 27 2012 20:43 vetinari wrote:Which is why I included the qualifier "by strangers".
Last time I checked, a husband, aquaintance, friend, brother, father, uncle, etc, etc, is not a stranger.
At any rate, stranger rape is a quarter of forcible rapes. (I'm not including "agreeing to sex while drunk and regretting it the next morning", "he threatened to break up with me if we didn't have sex", "I changed my mind during the sex but was too scared to tell him to stop", "my body language was saying yes, I didn't say no, but I never explicitly said "fuck me"" as rape.)
Of those stranger rapes, a significant amount is motivated in whole or part by the perception that the victim was a slut, and therefore deserved it. Guess what contributes to the perception that a particular woman is a slut.
Humans retro-actively write their memory. People can create memories after the event. They raped a person, they have to justify it for themselves because nobody wants to view themselves as evil, so they call her a slut to justify their actions whilst during the act itself, they were never motivated by such perceptions.
But I would still like a link to a stastic that shows that "The perception that she was a slut" is a main motivator of rape. It's not something that I ever came across but if you have some evidence that I missed, by all means, share it.
By the way zalz, if a woman has sex against her will, in countries were marital rape is not a crime, she was not raped, because in her jurisdiction, she gave consent to vaginal sex to her husband in perpetuity when she said "I do".
She was still raped because rape is forced sex.
I don't care that a bunch of medieval dictators pass a law that says it's not rape.
North-Korea can call itself a democracy all it likes, it's not. Saudi-Arabia can say that forcing sex on your wife is fine, it's still rape.
Its not a main motivator, its a contributing factor. The main motivator for stranger rape is an unfulfilled desire for sex.
No, rape is sex without free consent. If you consent to sex, you were not raped. I currently have a mobile broadband contract with my telco. They take 30 bucks from my bank account every month. However, I don't want them to take money from my account. Since I have not cancelled my contract (divorced), it is not theft when they take the money from my bank account. On the other hand, if I entered a contract in which I had to approve each payment, and they take it from my account without my approval, then it was theft.
No one is raped because they are perceived to be slutty. Someone gets raped because another person makes the conscious decision to rape them. When you start talking about how it would have been prevented had the victim taken certain precautions, you shift the blame to them.
If I mug you because I think you look rich, I'm still making a conscious decision to commit a crime against you. No one's going to start "well why didn't you dress like a bum so you looked less mugging-worthy?" lines, which would imply that you are somewhat responsible for a crime committed against you by another.
And yes it's true that the vast majority of rapes are committed by people the victim is acquainted with. However I don't think marital rape is the most common subsection of that.
As an analogy, living in contemporary Iraq or Afghanistan means that you are more likely to die violently. That doesn't mean it's the fault of IED victims for living there, but understanding this fact can be useful.
On January 27 2012 21:50 Haemonculus wrote:If I mug you because I think you look rich, I'm still making a conscious decision to commit a crime against you. No one's going to start "well why didn't you dress like a bum so you looked less mugging-worthy?" lines, which would imply that you are somewhat responsible for a crime committed against you by another.
If you visibly display jewelry while walking through a slum late at night, I think people would point out that you should have done some things differently. Again, that doesn't make it your fault.
On January 27 2012 21:50 Haemonculus wrote: No one is raped because they are perceived to be slutty. Someone gets raped because another person makes the conscious decision to rape them. When you start talking about how it would have been prevented had the victim taken certain precautions, you shift the blame to them.
If I mug you because I think you look rich, I'm still making a conscious decision to commit a crime against you. No one's going to start "well why didn't you dress like a bum so you looked less mugging-worthy?" lines, which would imply that you are somewhat responsible for a crime committed against you by another.
And yes it's true that the vast majority of rapes are committed by people the victim is acquainted with. However I don't think marital rape is the most common subsection of that.
No one has their car stolen because they leave the keys in the ignition. Someone has their car stolen because another person makes the conscious decision to steal their car. When you start talking about how it would have been prevented had the victim taken certain precautions, you shift the blame to them.
EPT
