The Quran, that book that no one reads and that only Islamaphobes think will influence society says quote, "[24:13] Only if they produced four witnesses (you may believe them)."
From Reuters
Pakistan's ruling party has given in to the demands of religious conservatives opposed to the amendment of Islamic laws that would have taken rape out of the sphere of religious law.A bill to amend the Islamic laws, including the one that requires rape victims to produce four male witnesses or risk an adultery charge, has been fiercely opposed by the conservatives.
I can imagine very few situations where four non-particpating men witness a rape. But maybe I am just not big enough mentally.
The Arab League and The Muslim Brotherhood both claim that "the Quran is their Constitution".
I don't think that the meaning of this quote is lost in translation.
That produces a real problem for an American George W. that thinks these muslim countries will accept Democracy. I believe the only thing that we will be seeing is Theocracy with Nazi Fascism.
Taliban Lite Taliban Lite Taliban Lite Taliban Lite Taliban Lite Taliban Lite Taliban Lite Taliban Lite - Dammit.
I had a serious discussion with a poster (poser?) named Bargholz; where is he now?
I believe that the American people were snookered. The ruling clerics will not accept western style democracy contrary to what Mr Bush's goal was or wasn't. The clerics are in charge of Afghanistan and Iraq, and the Taliban are resurgent.
Oh, come on, Robert. What if it were as part of a sporting event or something? Hmm? Got you there, don't I?
Honestly, you filthy infi - I mean, islamophobes. Must you persist in your disbelief?
Prophet Geoff
I flew off the handle again. The story is about Pakistan. What happens there applies to all Islamic countries.
And the left thinks Bushhitler and the rabid right is bad in our country. Geez -- these guys really take the 'conservative' thing pretty far, huh?
Where's all the seething Human Rights outrage? Where's Kofi's creamy condemnation?
The world wonders... er maybe it doesn't either...
Pakistan gives in to CONSERVATIVES on rape law"
Digest that you guys, a liberal Muslim is basically a good guy, one who can live side by side with us in the west.. tis the righteous, (self righteous), true believing, rigid, unbending inflexible conservative that is apparently the problem with all of the world and I don't mean just the muslim conservative.
See my comment above jsla.. a conservative is a conservative is a conservative, a true believer is a true believer is a true believer, regardless of belief, and true believers are conservative.. one of my favorite books is still Eric Hoffer's The True Believer.
But point is taken about the left, or at least those on the left that haven't outgrown Marxian analysis..I never had any use for those morons and useless idiots, any more than I have or have had for the fascists of yesteryear and the proto fascists of todays Right Wing.
A lot of you guys will object and don't like it, but I can draw clear similarities between the "conservative Muslim", and the "conservative" westerner.
As regards misguided liberals and leftists, perhaps you could do as I do, attempt to politely correct them via email anytime they say something wrong or foolish..however from my observation Jihad Watchers and "the right" are rather confrontational, emotional, and intemperate and any communication at all is wasted as they inevitably are accusatory, negative, and derogatory. Not a way to win a point, win friends and influence people.
I watched a debate today between two 9-11 conspiracy theoriests (arrogant young punks) and two gentleman from Popular Mechanics.. The conspiracy punks lost the debate..they were vehement, angry, accusatory and called the gents from Popular Mechanics liars, time and again.
The devotees, the adherents of the 9-11 Conspiracy club are not leftists, liberals, old farts but are young kids (from my 67 year old point of view) Gen X'ers and Gen Y'ers, who are also very conservative from a cultural war point of view (meaning homophobic, anti abortion, anti feminist, pro patriarchy..they too share a lot in common with the Mullahs of Iran and the Shari'a lovers.
So people are fearing 'what if a fundamentalist islamic power got hold of nuclear weapons?'. Looks like we've already got that situation...
Nariz, you will never get it. An islamic conservative is not the same as a western conservative. They are diametric opposites. An islamic conservative wants a theocratic state to tell people how to live their lives. A western conservative wants the government out of their lives.
The only time you post on JW, is to link the bad guys in the islamic world to Christians or conservatives, or Republicans, or the Right in America.
We get it. You are a leftist. And very lonely.
It is a marxist, a socialist, a leftist, that wants bigger, more intrusive government. It is the leftists that have subjugated us all to the PC police. It is the leftists that seek to silence dissent in the media and on the web. It is the Left that always wants to shout down speakers at universities. It is the Left that does all the protesting, the throwing of molotov cocktails, the chanting of slogans.
Nor do you seem to understand the difference between a political conservative and a religious conservative. Nor do you understand the difference between conservative and right-wing.
To help you understand this better, visit this link.
political sphere
It describes the political sphere not just in Right and Left, but between Statist and Libertarian.
Take the test here
You are suggesting that religious statists in Iran are the same as conservatives in America. They are worlds apart. Not to mention that there is no behavioral, or moral basis for the comparison.
But this is a free board, so you can continue with your rants. But please educate yourself so that when you rant, you rant with some sense of moral coherence.
Now now, Nariz -- just when you appear to be making progress you lapse into those same old overbroad (and silly) generalizations, and that unbecoming persecution complex again... tsk tsk! Really, I'm sincere when I say you showed some good progress by not immediately confusing criticism of the left with Jihad (like you've often done before) reducing it now to a garden variety persecution of yourself rather than all out Christian Conservative American Jihad. ( CCAJ ) That's a good step, and a huge one for you -- seriously!
(Don't forget cuz I've told you before: I'm a Democrat, so don't trot out that silly swill of Right WIng proto-fascist with me, OK? Thanks!)
August22 -- Nariz isn't completely hopeless. He is dedicated to the anti-Jihad which is all to the good, though I think he's often extremely naive about how to handle it. While once upon a time he seemed unable to stop conflating Western Christians and Western Conservatives with the all out Islamic variety (even calling such persons "Jihadist" when they became utterly spent listening to some of his positions) he seems a little milder now, and able to make some distinctions based on reality. Maybe.
I once wrote a little poem to him:
The poster Nariz does spread this disease
Of Moral Equivalency and other such sleeze.
Give him a squeeze and off hop the fleas
To reprise with great ease such a verminous cheese.
The quran is a spring of constant surprises, when you think it can get no stupider, the muslim clerics come up with something even stupider out of it.
It is not even good as toilet paper. Not absorbent enough.
Naseem,
Take care to take 4 trustworthy sane, pious, adult, male Muslims with you wherever you go, OK? And not 4 Ahmadiyyas, that probably wouldn't count.
We would hate for anything to happen to you in your last days before Pakistan shuts down your Internet access to JW/DW. Probably no Internet access in the hudood jails, right?
Nariz,
Where did you get the idea, 'The devotees, the adherents of the 9-11 Conspiracy club are not leftists, liberals, old farts but are young kids (from my 67 year old point of view) Gen X'ers and Gen Y'ers, who are also very conservative from a cultural war point of view...'?
As I stood watching groups of "Investigate 9/ll"ers across from Ground Zero yesterday (large groups, I might add), what struck me was the range in ages. Lots of "kids", sure, but many, many from the white-hair crowd. I felt like I was watching a 1960's/1970's anti-Vietnam-war stereotype rebirth; scruffy hair & beards everywhere, the aura of "cool" about them, etc. The media was all over them the whole time (yet I saw no mention of them on the news last night; odd).
I could deduce nothing from their politics from watching them, but they looked like classic lefties. Their stated belief that our government had a hand in the events on 9/11/01 comes not from a conservative distrust of government, it seems to me, but rather from a hate of the current Republican administration. Am I missing something here?
I'm having trouble understanding this story. It gives me a headache.
Didn't Mohammed have his revelation concerning the need for four witnesses in order to protect his (possibly errant?) wife, Aisha? In other words, he was upping the ante in support of presumed innocence. The timely convenience of Mohammed's received revelation may have caused Aisha even to get a little cynical: Bukhari 6:60:311 'I (Aisha) said (to the Prophet), "I feel that your Lord hastens in fulfilling your wishes and desires."' Nevertheless, the precedent was set for establishing guilt in matters of adultery.
So how did this all get turned around to presumed guilt of the victim in matters of rape, requiring four witnesses to establish her innocence? This is dizzying, even by Moslem standards of logic.
Nariz:
I read your post and you state: "a conservative is a conservative is a conservative, a true believer is a true believer is a true believer, regardless of belief, and true believers are conservative"
Quite a categorical statement. May I propose a little gedank experiment. You move into a new house. On one side lives Mother Theresa. On the other lives the Ayatollah Khomeni. Both are true believers. There's a big snowstorm and (God forbid) you put your back out. Which one of these two true believers shovels your sidewalk? Take your time and think it over before answering.
Vee you make some good points to challeng Nariz's silly overbroad generalizaions about the origins of the deranged conspiracists -- while we don't see too many of them rallying at, say, a NASCAR event, we do see TONS of them in any San Francisco or Berkeley venue. Hotbeds of the ultra right? Hardly.
Nariz's silly statement is a milder form of the same kind of derangement the conspiracists embody -- divorced from facts, reliant on a fantasy construct in order to have any cohesion.
While I don't want to engage in the same flavor of overbroad breathless hysterics as Nariz, I think one might infer that the parasitic insanity based conspiracy nut jobs herald more often from the LEFT than the RIGHT, although I'm sure their are right wing boobs too. But most often the conspiracies can be seen as extensions of the same theories the extreme left espouses:
Western Governments are intrinsically evil. Our power is only used for horrible things -- nothing good comes of it.
Western peoples are corrupt and venal and guilty of heinous crimes -- Third Worlders are Holy and always innocent and always victims of OUR crimes. We should hand the keys over to them because we have bungled it, and they are far wiser than us...
Taken to their logical conclusions, these leftist arguments result in theories the West is a comlete sham, that we never landed on the moon, that AIDS was invented by the CIA to kill black people, or that the buildings were brought down by demolition charges.
I always wonder why, if the goverment is so good at colluding and conducting elaborate hoaxes in order to steal power and subjugate us or conduct warrantless wars, then why weren't they able to plant WMDs in Iraq to make their pretext for war come true? Surely that would have been one of the easiest hoaxes ever to be perpetrated?
"Bush lied, people died" is only a stone's throw away from "The CIA planted demolition charges in the buildings in order to wage war on Islam".
Once these people would have been medicated, or ostacized to the dark corners of some downtown motel next to the methadone clinic. Now they've become part of the "vibrant patchwork of human diversity".
Yuck!
"So how did this all get turned around to presumed guilt of the victim in matters of rape, requiring four witnesses to establish her innocence? This is dizzying, even by Moslem standards of logic."
it's easy:
as in any cult the "leader" gets a special treatment compared to the followers
Chatillon:
Being raped is a form of committing adultery. if she didn't want to be having intercourse, she wouldn't have left the women's quarters.
*aaargh*
One has to wonder what the purpose is of keeping a law that rewards the rapist and destroys the victim.
1) An Islamic rape victim is accused of adultery if she reports the rape and is either imprisoned or killed.
2) An Islamic rape victim brings dishonor upon her family so she is then killed by a family member.
3) Islamic children are taught from a very young age that suicide is good and to die a "martyr" is something to aspire to.
4) Islamic mothers bragg about their children dying for Allah. They have many children with which to sacrifice.
5) Islamic men can starve their wives to death if they are disobedient.
6) Shiites murder Sunnis; Sunnis murder Shiites. All in the name of Islam.
What are the common denominators of this belief system? Might makes right. No compassion for those weaker than you. Life is cheap. Power through death. You die, since I'm in charge and I'm stronger than you. Brainwash and lie to the masses. Promise them everything and let them think they are doing something important when they are really dying in vain. Force everyone on the face of the earth to live under this tyranny. Stifle all free thought; allow no free will. Destroy any who oppose us. Make sure it's really painful.
We need to pay close attention to this because as this is part of Sharia law and Muslims are determined to impose their laws on the rest of us, we need to be very clear about what they are saying. Because we need to be very clear about what we are willing to fight against and die for.
August 22 wrote, in response to Nariz: "A western conservative wants the government out of their lives."
Well, not entirely. Many Western conservatives (I mean, people who call themselves conservative)I've heard from are quite happy to have the government interfere, and in fact frequently lobby the government to interfere, in people's lives in the most intrusive and aggressive ways, eg. listening in on people's private phone calls, spying on people in their homes, retrieving private information about people from hospitals, libraries, etc., interfering with women's reproductive choices by preventing access to such things as the morning-after pill and the IUD... maybe to be more accurate one could say that "conservatives want the government out of THEIR lives, but not necessarily out of other people's." And how many conservatives would really want the government to be "out of their lives" to the extent that there was no longer free public education or a police force? Very few, I would wager.
Anyway, the terms "conservative" and "liberal" are bandied about so much these days as to be fundamentally meaningless. Both can mean very different things to different people, particularly people of different nationalities. Many of the people on this board who identify themselves as Americans seem to assume that these terms mean exactly the same to them as they do to other people. Not necessarily the case. For example, "left wing" and "liberal" are frequently lumped together. In fact, in some uses of the word a "liberal" can be very right-wing. Also, the frequent confusion of the terms "liberal" and "libertarian" doesn't help either.
My point? There is nothing wrong in itself with being "conservative,"; it's what you actually want to "conserve" that matters. If you want to "conserve" a system in which women have no rights, then yeah, I have problems with that, no matter what culture you're from or what your religion is.
Most likely by the black/what standards of some of the U.S. commentators, I am "conservative" in some ways and "liberal" in other ways. I think that could be said about most reasonable people. But the faulty dichotomy that has been created between the terms "liberal" and "conservative", primarily of U.S. origin, and all it ultimately does is divide people who have far more to unite them.