Muslim Cleric Condemns Christianity for Teaching Gender Equality

Christians have moral values, most leftist types do not...Mahoundians have morals also, but they are twisted beyond recognition...

Yes, the 'D'...The object of their affection...
Men have been driven insane by the D...It has caused them to wander in dark and strange places...No amount of inner struggle jihad can overcome the D...it has power over them, even more than Allah...If you can't control the D, you cannot become inner pure...The D will get in your way every time...An out of control D is the bane of mankind...it should be haram in Islam, but apparently it is not, it is encouraged...

Yes, Ralph, repentance is the key; and I would add that the truth can only be found in Jesus Christ, and His teaching that both men and women need to be born again:

In reply Jesus declared, "I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again." -- John 3:3

Diana wrote:

At the risk of breaking up the indignation meeting, are we completely certain that this sheikh was speaking with a straight face? A prominent Muslim speaking in public has to be careful how he expresses his dissidence, but this one struck me as dripping with sarcasm.

A devout Muslim does not acknowledge "justice" outside the sharia. It does not occur to him that a mere Bible could be "more just" than the glorious Qur'an.
...

Diana, I presume you are mostly referring to this quote:

“Now,” said the sheikh, “if my son hears such things while he’s in school, he’ll come home and say to me, ‘Father why do you have many wives? You are unjust—unlike Christianity which is full of justice’!”

He went on to say that such teachings completely contradict “the religion of the prophet,” who of course had many wives—more than the Quran’s prescribed four—made divorce a simple matter for men, and decreed that females only inherit half of what males inherit.

The cleric complained that, based on such Christian teachings, Muslim men who try to exercise their Islamic rights—including polygamy, double-inheritance, and easy divorce (recent examples include via text-messaging)—become “criminals, and the religion [Islam] that taught them such things taught them crimes.”
...............................

Diana, with all respect, I believe you are reading this as a rational Westerner—and not as a devout Muslim would.

There is, in fact, a entire body of Muslim lamentation over how Christianity and the secular West appears to be more just than Islam, and how this "appearance" leads Muslims astray.

They then usually go on to quote Qur'an 2:216:

But perhaps you hate a thing and it is good for you; and perhaps you love a thing and it is bad for you. And Allah Knows, while you know not.
...............................

This specifically referrers to waging violent Jihad—but it can refer to *any* of the ugliness of Islam.

And, indeed, the pious cleric goes on to say:

The cleric concluded by saying it is impermissible “to produce texts that contradict the teachings of the Quran, or the practices we’ve been raising our children on for a million years.”

This is a completely orthodox position—that anything outside the texts of Islam must be rejected out of hand, and that any value it might appear to have—no matter how compelling—is just a trap to lead pious Muslims away from Islam.

Pursuant to my posting above.

I just did a quick look at wikipedia and it seems that the consensus is that recognisably human humans date back around 200,000 years.

Quote: "Anatomic changes indicating modern language capacity also arise during the Middle Paleolithic.[citation needed]

"The systematic burial of the dead, the music, early art, and the use of increasingly sophisticated multi-part tools are highlights of the Middle Paleolithic..".

Hey, maybe what Muslims mean by 'a milliion years' is that they reject the *human* and attempt to return to the PRE-human...no art, no music, no pet dogs...no complex thinking or invention or creativity...

Actually, I see a common bond between Islam and the Western Left in that both gnash and fight against the morality taught by the Christian faith. It's just that the modern Left's striptease has gone a lot farther than Islam's willingness to soften the demands of Christ (e.g., conceding to the male's lusts, even if making the restraints on the female's tighter).

Maybe the rise of the furor islamicus in our day is to show Western man once again that theology matters.

Kepha wrote:

Actually, I see a common bond between Islam and the Western Left in that both gnash and fight against the morality taught by the Christian faith. It's just that the modern Left's striptease has gone a lot farther than Islam's willingness to soften the demands of Christ (e.g., conceding to the male's lusts, even if making the restraints on the female's tighter).
........................

I'm sorry, Kepha—much as I respect your comments in general, I cannot agree with you here at all.

Remember, part of Islam's "conceding the male's lusts" has it condoning—and even sacralizing!—rape, the keeping of sex slaves, and pedophilia.

I would say that the average secular Westerner is far more Christian in his treatment of women and approach to love and sex than any truly devout Muslim ever could be.

Gravenimage, that's really interesting! I hadn't realised that this body of bewailing over the appearance of justice existed, or that Q2:216 was applied to non-military contexts. It's just amazing that they are willing to discuss it openly without worrying about how it will appear to the rest of us.

Dumbledore's Army, the word "million" creeps from ignorance to heresy. Most Muslims believe in eight-day creation. A British imam who preached evolution last year lost his job and received death-threats for his "apostasy". I don't know whether Islam has a doctrine on how long ago the world was supposed to be created (Muhammad had little sense of linear time; anything that happened before his grandfather was born was simply "the olden days") but the number is assuredly in the thousands rather than the millions of years.

Polygamy is not a rule in the islamic society, it's an exception and must remain an exception. The rule is monogamy, same as in Christianity.

I am very glad that you see it that way. All credit to you for thinking clearly!

But what this means is that you are a better person than Mohammed was.

The reason polygamy is an "exception" is that there is no society in the world with a 1:4 gender ratio so of course most families must be monogamous.

Even in the time of Mohammed, male Muslims outnumbered females right up until 627, when the warriors, after killing off male populations, swelled the ranks of the umma by taking large numbers of female slaves. Before 627 there was a desperate shortage of available Muslim women, and the only way a few men managed to be polygynous was because an even larger number were forced to remain bachelors. Polygyny did not solve any socio-economic problem, it created one.

Men like Mohammed, Abu Bakr and Omar were extremely selfish to take more than their fair share of women just because they could. Even Zayd ibn Haritha, whom Westerners pity because Mohammed stole his wife Zaynab, actually had two other wives at that time, and he acquired a fourth woman soon after divorcing Zaynab. The only "exceptional circumstance" that led to polygyny in early Islam was the exceptional self-centredness of its founders.

So here is the challenge. To root out the evils of polygyny, we need to persuade Muslims not to copy Mohammed. Do not be selfish like Mohammed. Be normal.

Diana wrote:

Gravenimage, that's really interesting! I hadn't realised that this body of bewailing over the appearance of justice existed, or that Q2:216 was applied to non-military contexts. It's just amazing that they are willing to discuss it openly without worrying about how it will appear to the rest of us
......................

Hi, Diana. Here's one example of
Sura 2:216 being used in reference to a non-military application; in this case, calamity in general:

http://en.islamtoday.net/artshow-264-3178.htm

And here's another example, where a Muslimah laments over remaining unmarried:

http://islamqa.info/en/ref/112172

In another example, the childless are not consoled by any love—of their spouse, of their relatives' children, or of adopted kids—but by the spectre that any children they might have had may well have hurt their parents by being bad Muslims.

The Imam then cites the vicious story of Al-Kidr, where this figure murders an inoffensive young man because he will supposedly grow up to disappoint his parents.

**Very ugly**.

This usage is quite common.

I'm having more trouble finding examples of pious Muslims considering the morality of the West to be a "trap" leading Muslims away from Islam—not because this is not common, it's just harder to Google.

Generally, the idea is that Christian and secular morality appeals to decent people—even Muslims—but that it is to be regarded as "false" because it conflicts with the Qur'an and the model of the loathsome "Prophet".

After all, in Islam anything that Muhammed or "Allah" did is regarded as good *merely because they did it*—even if it involves such horrors as mass murder, slavery, and rape.

So any Muslim who is naturally attracted to any human goodness and decency is perversely enjoined to suppress it *in the name of their horrible creed*.

God, I hate Islam.

Where do we disagree? I've said that Islam softens Christianity's rules to accommodate male lusts. As for the "secular" Westerner, most simply haven't worked their way to the logical end of their denial of Christ--but, as the demand for accepting homosexuality and abortion shows, they're slowly getting there.

Kepha wrote:

Where do we disagree? I've said that Islam softens Christianity's rules to accommodate male lusts.
.......................

Kepha, I thought you were implying that Islam is much preferable to secularism. Perhaps I misread your post.

If I did, my apologies.