Keys to the Kingdom

bob x said:
Egypt and Ethiopia are a test case, one with Islam one without, but sharing a lot of cultural heritage-- same outcomes; conclusion, Islam isn't the factor, culture is.
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Hi Bob

I did a whole thread about female circumcision (I think in the lounge of all places) but it had some links to very informative articles. I agree the practice probably began in Africa (think I said that in an earlier post on this thread) but I am pleased you can accept now it is a cultural practice. However, that does not excuse the Muslim scholars that support it and say it is an Islamic practice.

bob x said:
On "affairs", those can also start because a wife wants escape from a jealously possessive husband who threatens to beat up any man who tries to be friendly to her: this I have seen.
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I accept that affairs can start for a million reasons, it is a human weakness. Yes a controlling husband could lead to a wife wanting to have an affair. In Egypt they tend not to happen, not because the people are so pious but because they are terrified of what the neighbours might say. Other than men living on one contintent and women on another, you cannot eradicate adultery. All I was trying to say was that by not taking that first small step, it can stop you from taking a big one. Well, it works for me. :)

bob x said:
Even if it "works" in that sense, I would still say the trade-off is sad, indeed downright unGodly-- but, as you are now doubt thinking right now, who asked my opinion?
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I sometimes find it sad too, because of the extent it is taken to. I love my father in law, yet I am not allowed to hug him. Sometimes I rebel and kiss him on the cheek, he goes completely rigid and doesn't know where to look. Yet when we walk in the street together he always makes me hold his arm (the idea being this is for my safety so I do not fall but we both know he just enjoys human contact).

If I am truthful with you I think the perfect lifestyle would be somewhere in the middle of our cultures (western and Muslim). One is too free and one is too rigid - nowhere is perfect.

bob x said:
when I find you unclear and mistake your meaning, you get snappish and accuse me of intentionally and maliciously misunderstanding;
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You really can't expect to say such things as 'lump in a bag' and not get a snippy reaction. I love posting on CR but the last couple of weeks I appear to have been bashed from all sides (Muslim and non Muslim) but that is no excuse for being snippy with strangers, so I apolgise for my snippyness.

bob x said:
But maybe you are just using the word "respect" in a weaker sense: that you would not *interfere* with my choice to live as I do, regardless of your low opinion of that.
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Acceptance of choice is perhaps the right terminology.

bob x said:
(with some exceptions where facial visibility is crucial, as in driver's license and other ID photos, and on the witness stand, to cite two recent controversial cases).
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For identification purposes I agree with you completely, what is the point of a passport with a photo of a piece of black cloth? As long as women that wear the veil are allowed to request a female to check their physical identity against their documents. As for the witness stand, I think a compromise is called for. The court should be cleared of all non essential personnel (including clerks), the witness should have a member of their family with them and then remove their veil. In court cases facial expression is often very telling.

bob x said:
What perturbed me to begin with about the choice of the "veil" as symbol is that you are not just one individual woman making an idiosyncratic choice of costume;
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I am just one woman making a choice of dress. When I voice fundamentalist ideas then you may assume that is my mindset. When I come on the net and call for jihad or stoning, then you can make judgements about my thinking.

bob x said:
The flip side, of course, is that Muslims would not feel the need to be so hostile to the United States and our ways, if the US were not so pushy, both militarily and culturally, on other peoples.
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Thank you, I am pleased you can see there are two sides to every story.
 
"that does not excuse the Muslim scholars that support it and say it is an Islamic practice."
The whole structure of Islam, basing morality on "Submit to what you are told" instead of humanitarian principles, makes it more difficult for Muslim societies to root out inherited barbarities from the past. Christianity had some ugly inherited barbarities (slavery, genocidal warfare, burning people alive...) and in my view still does, but at least has scriptural warrant for re-evaluating the morality of practices based on what they do to people.

"I love my father in law, yet I am not allowed to hug him. Sometimes I rebel and kiss him on the cheek, he goes completely rigid and doesn't know where to look"
I'm sorry, but the more you explain the Muslim culture, the sicker it sounds.

"If I am truthful with you I think the perfect lifestyle would be somewhere in the middle of our cultures (western and Muslim). "
I can get as annoyed with some aspects of our culture (say, a commercial advertisement that relies on a sniggering, adolescent kind of sexual reference) as anybody, but I'm sorry, there is nothing in Muslim culture I would want to see imported.

"You really can't expect to say such things as 'lump in a bag' and not get a snippy reaction. "
Your reaction to that particular phrasing, which I promise not to repeat, was not one of the cases I was complaining of-- but, if you ask me why I find the veil repugnant, then, I am going to tell you. The context was your claim that it makes you *more* of a "person" to obliterate your human features, a position I continue to find absurd.

"I apolgise for my snippyness."
Don't worry about it; obviously this is very personal for you. I apologize for anything that has made you feel hurt. It is because there is such a wide chasm between us that the attempt to have dialogue is useful.

"As long as women that wear the veil are allowed to request a female to check their physical identity against their documents. "
You are not thinking things through. When a policeman (police are not 100% "men" but the probability is high) pulls a driver over, he may have no partner with him (if on a motorcycle, especially) or at most will have one (probably also male). She could insist on being taken down to the station, but would have to be frisked for weapons in such a case; cops die in traffic stops, often, and concealment is precisely what they have to be concerned about. Someone so "pious" that she cannot understand that drivers are not entitled to be concealed should just, like Saudi women, not drive. Highly religious Muslims are especially distrusted in the US right now, for excellent reasons of which you are aware.

"The court should be cleared of all non essential personnel (including clerks), the witness should have a member of their family with them and then remove their veil."
No way. The public right to observe the courts is fundamental. You are asking for very special privilege.

"I am just one woman making a choice of dress. "
No, you're not, anymore than a man in a uniform is just "one man making a choice of dress". You may not (thank God!) buy into the whole Wahhabi package, but the veil does stand for affiliation with Islamic culture, and the version of the culture as you explain it is, if not as repugnant as Wahhabiism, still a concern.
 
Hi Bob

Forgive me but I am going to bow out of this discussion, my brain really can't take any more critisism at the moment. I accept that you see my life as absurd and it is your right to feel that way. Must get on, after my husband finishes beating me I have cafe's to blow up. :p

I hope you enjoy your time on CR.

Salaam
Sally :)
 
Namaste Bobx

Can you tell me where you have gleaned all your facts and information regarding the Muslim world. Have you lived in a Muslim country? Have you spent time in a Mosque discussing the subjects you pontificate on with an Imam? Do you have a friend that wears Muslim garb and has reported this abuse to you?

I ask because I knew two people quite closely. One spent months in a Japanese POW camp in a hole and came out so malnourished he is legally blind. The other was in the service during the Korean War era, he never left stateside. One referred to Asians as gooks and slopes, the other with an amazing respect and love.

I ask because I have a family full of bigots and racists who base all their prejudices on the thoughts of others. This isn't my nuclear family, my mother and father moved away from them when we were toddlers as they could not take that side of their parents, brothers and sisters, and refused to raise us in that environment. Now not all my cousins have held onto those backward notions...but 90% have.

I ask because so often those that are so vehement and caustic have no personal contacts or limited personal contacts to base their viewpoint on.

I am sure that is not the case with you....
 
wil said:
A discussion of the requirements for entering Heaven and status there in...

All Abrahamic and all denominations/sects/divisions of each and every religion therin are encouraged to participate.

This stemmed from another thread....

On the flip side MW where does Islam fall in this regard? I know I've read that there is the thought that we are all Muslim and don't know it and Islam predates Mohamed (pbuh), but without knowing and following the five pillars...what is the status of an individual in the afterlife?
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Key to the kingdom of GOD is only through the present human incarnation who has come to you for your upliftment. Lord comes in human form in every human generation to preach and uplift the human souls. He is know as Human Incarnation, and identifying Him means you have identified the Lord directly. Participation in His mission of divine knowledge propagation means, you are directly serving Lord.

By this facility we can touch Him talk to Him, see Him, co-live with Him.
 
Southeast Michigan has the highest concentration of Muslims in the United States. Most of them seem friendly enough, if not very communicative.
 
bob x said:
Southeast Michigan has the highest concentration of Muslims in the United States. Most of them seem friendly enough, if not very communicative.
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im wondering if any like country music and drive pick up trucks.
 
While not all pickup trucks in southeast Michigan have Confederate flags and shotgun racks, a lot of them do. A popular bumper sticker (found almost exclusively on pickup trucks) after 9/11 showed a crude caricature of an Arab with the slogan "NUKE THEIR ASS -- GRAB THE GAS"
 
bob x said:
While not all pickup trucks in southeast Michigan have Confederate flags and shotgun racks, a lot of them do. A popular bumper sticker (found almost exclusively on pickup trucks) after 9/11 showed a crude caricature of an Arab with the slogan "NUKE THEIR ASS -- GRAB THE GAS"
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Would anyone expect anything else?? On the back of pickup trucks out my way after 9/11 came all these bumper stickers with flags and the slogan "These colors don't run!" 6 years later the flag is only the stars, all the red stripes have faded to white....

....leaves contemplating the metaphor.
 
bob x said:
While not all pickup trucks in southeast Michigan have Confederate flags and shotgun racks, a lot of them do. A popular bumper sticker (found almost exclusively on pickup trucks) after 9/11 showed a crude caricature of an Arab with the slogan "NUKE THEIR ASS -- GRAB THE GAS"
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Hmmm... promotion of hatred and greed. This only helps to create or maintain a negative stereotype for non-Americans. Americans cannot then in turn be surprised that such a stereotype exists, as such stickers confirm the stereotype. Very sad.

s.
 
bob x said:
showed a crude caricature of an Arab with the slogan "NUKE THEIR ASS -- GRAB THE GAS"
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Well at least it is an acceptance on their part that the hundreds of thousands of women and children being killed in Iraq is about Gas not freedom or a war on terror.

So would this be the part of America where people marry their siblings and drink moonshine? Or would that be a stereotype? :p
 
What we need is more bumper stickers that raise consciousness instead of degrade it. It truly is amazing how many folks are proud of their bigoted nature.

I liked this one...just a little wakeup call..."How many lives per gallon is it worth?"
 
Love it Wil, I shall buy one of those. Bumper stickers aren't really a British thing but I looked up some wonderful ones:

Unity in Diversity

One Light My Lamps

Will work for Peace

There was never a good war or a bad peace - Franklin


Also found this which I have to agree with:

A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject - Churchill.
 
"Would anyone expect anything else?? "
So you see: driving a pickup truck, like wearing cowboy boots, is not *intended* to send a message, but if you guess at the attitudes of the person, although you will not always be right, often you will.
"So would this be the part of America where people marry their siblings and drink moonshine? Or would that be a stereotype? "
Of course it would be, and not totally accurate: but not totally baseless either.
 
bob x said:
"Would anyone expect anything else?? "
So you see: driving a pickup truck, like wearing cowboy boots, is not *intended* to send a message, but if you guess at the attitudes of the person, although you will not always be right, often you will.
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touche, maybe I should have said...It wouldn't be unexpected or I wouldn't be surprised...

Now there many of the other bumperstickers mentioned I would be intrigued by seeing on the back of a pickup with a confederate flag and gun rack...
 
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