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The Islamic Epic Fail

rocketdodger said:
If you really think that, from a female point of view, the institutional misogyny the western religions are as bad as that of Islam, then you need to speak with more women. Or, if you are a woman, try spending a few months living in one of these countries.
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Fat chance.

There's a reason why 99.99% of all Muslim world - western world immigration is from the Muslim world to the west. The Muslim world's misogyny and racism (try getting anywhere in the Muslim world if you are a member of the "wrong" tribe or sub-ethnicity) is a major factor.
 
Ah, love the curtain. Reminds me of the curtain that runs down the middle of buses running between NYC and Hasidic communities upstate. They have curtains to separate the women away from the men while the men pray.

Here's an article about the lawsuit by the woman who didn't want to switch seats in order to accommodate this religious absurdity.

http://www.nytimes.com/1994/09/09/n...-t-leave-her-bus-seat-for-hasidic-prayer.html
 
sthomson said:
Dude, I critisize Islam all the time, along with my own culture. What I DON'T do is imply that every woman in a burqua is wearing one because they are oppressed, rather than as a legitimate expression of their religion. It's probably 6 of one, half-dozen of t'other.
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So it seems like you are saying that it is OK to take an overtly oppressive behavior -- forcing women to cover up any part of their body that men don't have to cover up -- and teach/brainwash women when they are raised to think that it is *actually* an expression of their religion -- nothing more -- and if they are loyal to their religion and family then they should 'want' to cover up (even though men don't have to).

Is that what you want to be saying? Because that is what you are saying.
 
Skeptic said:
Fat chance.

There's a reason why 99.99% of all Muslim world - western world immigration is from the Muslim world to the west. The Muslim world's misogyny and racism (try getting anywhere in the Muslim world if you are a member of the "wrong" tribe or sub-ethnicity) is a major factor.
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Yep.

The test is pretty simple -- take a muslim woman and force her to live a "good" western life for 6 months, take a western woman and force her to live a "good" muslim life for 6 months. Now see how many want to switch lives permanently.

Can anyone guess what might happen?
 
rocketdodger said:
Yep.

The test is pretty simple -- take a muslim woman and force her to live a "good" western life for 6 months, take a western woman and force her to live a "good" muslim life for 6 months. Now see how many want to switch lives permanently.

Can anyone guess what might happen?
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That will depend on the individuals involved, the circumstances under which they were forced to change their lifestyle, as well as your definitions of "good Western life" and "good Muslim life".

There are many women in Turkey who chose to dress modestly, pray five times a day, as well as abstain from pork and alcohol. People over here have a cultural aversion to pork, but there are women who would identify themselves as Muslims who go to the beach in Western style costumes and consume alcohol.

I wouldn’t presume to guess what Muslim women from countries where governments and cultures dictate their lives would chose. What are you basing your guess on?
 
sthomson said:
It saddens me when I see 12-14 yr old girls married off to Warren Jeffs and his croneys, all wearing old-timey clothes without zippers.

I'm getting sort of sick of targeted anti-Arab "They're soooo much worse u guyz!" rhetoric coming out of Europe. "Our institutional misogyny walks like THIS, while their institutional misogyny walks like THAT!"
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Floyt said:
Cultural relativism is a right bitch, ain't it.

Somehow I take such criticism more seriously when the presenter doesn't so obviously get off on it.
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bikerdruid said:
how clever and original...a muslim hate thread.:boggled:
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These.
 
Sideroxylon said:
What are you basing your guess on?
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Myself: All else being equal, I would gladly live in a society that gave me more personal freedoms than I have now, and I would not want to live in a society that took very many away.

And it would be a valid argument to say "well, you only value such freedom so highly because you were brought up that way -- to value freedom." I would agree with that.

But oppressed muslims don't use that argument -- they claim, again and again, that they have just as much freedom as anyone else and they simply *choose* not to exercise it.

And this is sort of telling -- if muslims defend their culture by insisting that their individuals could be just as free as individuals in the west, *if they wanted to*, it makes you think that they intuitively value freedom like most other humans.

So if most muslims have a gut feeling that freedom is good (and I think they do) then my guess is that most muslims would opt to live in a society that gives them more freedom rather than less.

And I am guessing that conversion statistics -- if they were available -- might show that the vast vast majority of invidivuals that convert to Islam are the ones that have very little freedom to begin with, due to economic or other factors in their life. What would that mean, if it could be confirmed?
 
rocketdodger said:
Myself: All else being equal, I would gladly live in a society that gave me more personal freedoms than I have now, and I would not want to live in a society that took very many away.

And it would be a valid argument to say "well, you only value such freedom so highly because you were brought up that way -- to value freedom." I would agree with that.

But oppressed muslims don't use that argument -- they claim, again and again, that they have just as much freedom as anyone else and they simply *choose* not to exercise it.

And this is sort of telling -- if muslims defend their culture by insisting that their individuals could be just as free as individuals in the west, *if they wanted to*, it makes you think that they intuitively value freedom like most other humans.

So if most muslims have a gut feeling that freedom is good (and I think they do) then my guess is that most muslims would opt to live in a society that gives them more freedom rather than less.

And I am guessing that conversion statistics -- if they were available -- might show that the vast vast majority of invidivuals that convert to Islam are the ones that have very little freedom to begin with, due to economic or other factors in their life. What would that mean, if it could be confirmed?
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:rolleyes:
 
PixyMisa said:
Yeah, right. They make a free, informed decision to dress in an all-concealing black sack.
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Well, yes some do. The same way some orthodox Jewish women make a decision to shave off all their hair and wear a wig, and some secular women decide to keep their breasts covered even in situations like the beach where no men are covering their chests.

I had a Pakistani woman as a philosophy professor once who had been in purdah as a younger woman, by choice, and had decided to abandon it in later life, again, her choice. She spoke of how, in the particular climate, it was actually one of the most comfortable things to wear and that she enjoyed the social invisibility it gave her. She enjoyed not having to wear makeup to leave to house, or go to an expensive hairdresser or worry about her clothes, her weight, all the things women are routinely judged on.
 
rocketdodger said:
Myself: All else being equal, I would gladly live in a society that gave me more personal freedoms than I have now, and I would not want to live in a society that took very many away.

And it would be a valid argument to say "well, you only value such freedom so highly because you were brought up that way -- to value freedom." I would agree with that.

But oppressed muslims don't use that argument -- they claim, again and again, that they have just as much freedom as anyone else and they simply *choose* not to exercise it.

And this is sort of telling -- if muslims defend their culture by insisting that their individuals could be just as free as individuals in the west, *if they wanted to*, it makes you think that they intuitively value freedom like most other humans.

So if most muslims have a gut feeling that freedom is good (and I think they do) then my guess is that most muslims would opt to live in a society that gives them more freedom rather than less.

And I am guessing that conversion statistics -- if they were available -- might show that the vast vast majority of invidivuals that convert to Islam are the ones that have very little freedom to begin with, due to economic or other factors in their life. What would that mean, if it could be confirmed?
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Guessing what these people might do or think is tough if you are not actually a Muslim woman or have never discussed such things with them. There are plenty of interviews and other accounts that you can find online of women who are very happy as Muslims, and of course from those who were not. The point I am making here is that there are many individuals who don't fit your oppression stereotype.

I don't know where you are going with the comments on converts. Do you reckon that applies to the many that do so in Western countries?
 
rocketdodger said:
I'm getting sort of sick of "we do bad stuff too, so we have no right to criticize their bad stuff" rhetoric coming out of apologists.

If you really think that, from a female point of view, the institutional misogyny the western religions are as bad as that of Islam, then you need to speak with more women. Or, if you are a woman, try spending a few months living in one of these countries.
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We have every right to criticize their bad stuff. But their 'bad stuff' is done, in the main, to at least nominally consenting adult women.
We have more than a right, but rather a responsibility, to do more when it comes our own faults simply because we are supposed to be more progressive and enlightened.

So while I may be a little disappointed, saddened and angered by the treatment of one gender of muslims by another I am far more disturbed that in Western democracies, in 2010, we have people that make excuses for what appears to be a worldwide child rape problem in the Catholic Church and the sexual abuses of children like many of the 'wives' in Jeffs little community.

These are not nominally consenting adults. And they are not in villages in the middle east. When the RCC child rape problem is brought up it is often ascribed to 'a few bad apples'. These bad apples appear to be in the Catholic Church in pretty much every country that it exists in and recently the Pope said it was a problem that was as bad as ordaining a woman. So there is your misogyny as well.

Why is it that all Muslims gat tarred with the same brush when we discuss things like burquas but it is a few bad apples when we are discussing child rape in the RCC?
 
bikerdruid said:
i have heard several women interviewed, who said the same thing.
what some might view as oppression, they viewed as liberating.
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You would have to be incredibly self-deluded to consider hiding in a sac 'liberating'. By doing so, aren't they just reinforcing their fear of judgement? If someone is preoccupied with how others view them (weight, make-up, hair, etc), wouldn't it be healthier to just confront that fear instead of hiding behind a curtain? Now that would be liberating.
 
ugot2bekidding said:
You would have to be incredibly self-deluded to consider hiding in a sac 'liberating'. By doing so, aren't they just reinforcing their fear of judgement? If someone is preoccupied with how others view them (weight, make-up, hair, etc), wouldn't it be healthier to just confront that fear instead of hiding behind a curtain? Now that would be liberating.
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so the women who claimed to be happy wearing their burka were deluded?
we should free them from their oppression whether they like it or not?
isn't that much like christian missionaries 'freeing' natives from their heathen religions?
 
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