18 replies to this topic

[basho]

Here's a reminder of the deathist, anti-female ideology that underlies the most popular group of world religions. If you wonder why nations like the U.S. glorify violence and demonize sexuality, look no further than the more extreme defenders of the Abrahamic religions:

Naked women seen as worse than bombs

National News - September 21, 2006

MAKASSAR, South Sulawesi: Militant Muslim cleric Abu Bakar Ba'asyir sees erotic shows on TV as "more dangerous than the Bali bombs".

Ba'asyir, who was released from jail on June 14 after serving 26 months for his involvement in the 2002 Bali bombing that killed 202 people, said pornography was more damaging because it destroyed people's morality.

"So if you ask me which one is more dangerous, nude women or the Bali bombs, then my answer would be the women showing off their skin," he said as quoted by Antara.

Ba'asyir, who chairs the Indonesian Mujahidin Council (MMI), was in Makassar to attend the 6th anniversary of the Committee for the Preparation of Sharia Enforcement. Both organizations seek to make Indonesia an Islamic state.

He called on TV stations across Indonesia to replace shows that have erotic content with programs Allah would approve of, such as Koran discussions, especially during the upcoming fasting month.

Ba'asyir also appealed to local administrations in South Sulawesi to adopt sharia law.

Here's an extract of some commentary on the above news article:

Judaism, Christianity, and Islam... All of their respective holy books declare in no uncertain terms that a woman is worth less than a man. All of their holy books treat the consent of a woman with complete silence, as if it doesn't exist. All of their holy books put restrictions on a woman's appearance and behavior as if it were their fault that men tend to sexually assault them; as if the woman is to blame for being the object of a man's lust.

The act of sex is the expression of life-oriented values. The act of violence is the expression of death-oriented values. Anyone who supports violence, especially as being more "moral" than sexuality, is unmistakably at the height of the anti-life mindset.

[Mind]

I know it is fashionable to lump all of the Abrahamic faiths into one lump nowadays, but we are talking many orders of magnitude difference between some present-day sections of the muslim world and the vast majority of Christians and Jews. When I bring up the old testament (slavery/men superior to women) in debates with people the standard talking point nowadays is "god didn't mean it that way" (which of course brings in all kinds of other logical problems....a different debate). The fellow you reference in the article still thinks and acts like it is 500AD.

Dennett says the West should be careful to not spread our "destructive" viral memes to the muslim world (freedom, tolerance, women's rights, porn, entertainment). That would work just fine if they would return the favor, but as you see in the article quoted above, they are not content to just sit in their corner of the world and oppress women, they want to spread Sharia law around the world. Thus it is a clash of cultures.

[basho]

The fellow you reference in the article still thinks and acts like it is 500AD.

That would be true if his view were an isolated example. But even now, in 2008, there are entire nations that live by this philosophy. You don't have to look far for examples:

"Homosexuals deserve to be executed or tortured and possibly both, an Iranian leader told British MPs during a private meeting at a peace conference, The Times has learned. Mohsen Yahyavi is the highest-ranked politician to admit that Iran believes in the death penalty for homosexuality after a spate of reports that gay youths were being hanged."

This is what happens to teenage homosexuals in such nations:


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...the standard talking point nowadays is "god didn't mean it that way"

The fact that the ideology is violent and repressive at its core, while still being so open to interpretation, is the reason why it is so widespread and persistent. You have to be careful about arguing against symptomatic effects while at the same time defending the core values that are the root of the issue.

[Mind]

The fact that the ideology is violent and repressive at its core, while still being so open to interpretation, is the reason why it is so widespread and persistent. You have to be careful about arguing against symptomatic effects while at the same time defending the core values that are the root of the issue.

I know, I was just pointing out the degrees of difference. Which you have also done by showing those pics. Scary! (and tragic)

[basho]

I know, I was just pointing out the degrees of difference. Which you have also done by showing those pics. Scary! (and tragic)

Yeah, that's very true. If we had to accept religious rule in some nations, I think most people would by far prefer the moral philosophy put forward by people like Elijah in his various postings here to what exists currently.

[basho]

This, from only several hours ago, as at the time of my posting (the latest death toll is higher):

BAGHDAD (AFP) — Explosives strapped to two mentally impaired women were triggered by remote control in co-ordinated blasts Friday that ripped through two Baghdad pet markets killing 64 people, an official said. (link)

"Both women were mentally impaired. They were wearing belts containing 15 kilogrammes (33 pounds) of explosives," said Major General Qasim Ata, spokesman for the Baghdad security plan.

"The explosives were detonated by remote control," he told AFP. Investigators had determined that the explosives were stuffed with iron slugs and designed to cause as much damage as possible.

[niner]

That would be true if his view were an isolated example. But even now, in 2008, there are entire nations that live by this philosophy. You don't have to look far for examples:

"Homosexuals deserve to be executed or tortured and possibly both, an Iranian leader told British MPs during a private meeting at a peace conference, The Times has learned. Mohsen Yahyavi is the highest-ranked politician to admit that Iran believes in the death penalty for homosexuality after a spate of reports that gay youths were being hanged."

Was that Pat Robertson in the back in one of those pictures? OK, I jest, but there are some who would be happy to turn America into an authoritarian theocracy. And I'm not talking about Muslims... Comparing our response to Janet Jackson's boob to our response to Bush's war in Iraq, I'd have to say that many Americans are right in there with Abu Bakar Ba'asyir.

[niner]

Explosives strapped to two mentally impaired women were triggered by remote control in co-ordinated blasts Friday that ripped through two Baghdad pet markets killing 64 people, an official said.

Gashinshotan has joined Al Qaeda in Iraq.

[Shannon Vyff]

That would not look good for their cause, using remote controls to blow up mentally challenged women. I did hear on the news that Baghdad police released this story, and the U.S. military was saying it might be different--they were not sure if remote control devices were used--we'll probably know more in a few weeks after investigators have looked at the scene, and interviewed witnesses...

But religious fundamentalism of any type is scary--course our corporations pursuit of profit over health, and the fact that the war is now causing major science funding cuts in U.K. and the U.S., especially in science seen as on 'the fringe' or not necessary -like oh, physics... yeah, lots of scary stuff in the world right now.

[basho]

I did hear on the news that Baghdad police released this story, and the U.S. military was saying it might be different

Yep, there is always going to be allot of immediate knee-jerk responses to such an event, and you'd have to be highly skeptical of such early statements.

Regardless of their mental state, its tragic that women are increasingly being co-opted as bloody weapons against the poor and innocent by the twisted ideology of a global religion.

[basho]

Things are not improving:

Afghan Student Sentenced to Death after Downloading Report Critical of Islamic Fundamentalists who Misrepresent the Koran to Justify Oppression of Women

February 01, 2008

A 23-year-old student journalist in Afghanistan has been sentenced to death for downloading and distributing a report that is critical of the oppressive treatment of women in some Islamic societies.

Sayed Pervez Kambaksh (at right), who is a journalism student at Balkh University and a writer for Jahan-e Naw, was sentenced last October after downloading a report from a Farsi website that criticized Islamic fundamentalists who misrepresent statements in the Koran to justify the oppression of women. Kambaksh was arrested after someone filed a complaint against him. He is accused of blasphemy for distributing the report to other students and teachers at his school.

He was tried by a sharia court (which oversees Islamic religious law) and was not allowed legal representation, according to news reports. The Afghan Senate passed a motion this week supporting the sentence, according to the British newspaper The Independent.

Other journalists have been warned that they would be arrested if they protested in support of Kambaksh.

The Independent has launched a campaign to support Kambaksh, urging readers to pressure the UK Foreign Office to intervene with the Afghan government. The newspaper has posted a petition online for readers to fill out and submit.

[cyborgdreamer]

Was that Pat Robertson in the back in one of those pictures? OK, I jest, but there are some who would be happy to turn America into an authoritarian theocracy. And I'm not talking about Muslims... Comparing our response to Janet Jackson's boob to our response to Bush's war in Iraq, I'd have to say that many Americans are right in there with Abu Bakar Ba'asyir.

Many people may have reacted more strongly to Janet Jackson's boob. However, if you asked them, I think most would say that thousands of deaths cause more harm than an exposed breast.

[basho]

Many people may have reacted more strongly to Janet Jackson's boob.

Its not just boobs, even topless males, photographed from behind in B&W will get cited for obscenity and possibly jail time. See the news story below.

I can't believe that this pic is considered so obscene *in a Western nation* that you are threatened with jail time and obscenity charges. Admittedly, I wouldn't want to have to look at a hint of a guy's ass crack, but still... obscenity charges?? That's ridiculous. Even Jesus is portrayed topless on the cross.

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February 3, 2008 http://hamptonroads.com/node/452689

Police, saying they were responding to citizen complaints, carted away two large promotional photographs from the Abercrombie & Fitch store in Lynnhaven Mall on Saturday and cited the manager on obscenity charges.

The citation was issued under City Code Section 22.31, Bernstein said, which makes it a crime to display "obscene materials in a business that is open to juveniles."

Bernstein said the summons for a Class One misdemeanor was issued to the manager because there is no legal way to issue a summons to a corporate entity in such circumstances. The manager was not arrested but faces a fine of up to $2,000 and as much as a year in jail, if convicted.

The mural-like black-and-white photographs were taken from the store at midafternoon.

Bernstein confirmed that one depicts three shirtless young men from the back, walking through a field. The man in the lead appears to be about to pull up his jeans, which have slipped down enough to reveal his upper buttocks.

The other image is of a woman who is topless and whose "breast is displayed with her hand covering just the nipple portion," Bernstein said. "You could still pretty much see the rest of the breast."

[27GV]

Oh ****. Has anyone considered the consequences if these various Islamic leaders are able to attain immortality? They could potentially keep up this stupidity forever. We would never recieve any form of reform as - in these places - it is usually brought about by the death of the nut-job in charge rather than any true grass roots movement.

[lunarsolarpower]

Has anyone considered the consequences if these various Islamic leaders are able to attain immortality?

At least one person has. Here's a quote:

The imam is at prayer in a gyrostabilized mosque.

His mosque is not very big, and it has a congregation of one: He prays on his own every seventeen thousand two hundred and eighty seconds. He also webcasts the call to prayer, but there are no other believers in trans-Jovian space to answer the summons. Between prayers, he splits his attention between the exigencies of life support and scholarship. A student both of the Hadith and of knowledge-based systems, Sadeq collaborates in a project with other scholars who are building a revised concordance of all the known isnads, to provide a basis for exploring the body of Islamic jurisprudence from a new perspective – one they'll need sorely if the looked-for breakthroughs in communication with aliens emerge. Their goal is to answer the vexatious questions that bedevil Islam in the age of accelerated consciousness; and as their representative in orbit around Jupiter, these questions fall most heavily on Sadeq's shoulders.

Sadeq is a slightly built man, with close-cropped black hair and a perpetually tired expression: Unlike the orphanage crew he has a ship to himself. The ship started out as an Iranian knock off of a Shenzhou-B capsule, with a Chinese type 921 space-station module tacked onto its tail; but the clunky, 1960s look-alike – a glittering aluminum dragonfly mating with a Coke can – has a weirdly contoured M2P2 pod strapped to its nose. The M2P2 pod is a plasma sail, built in orbit by one of Daewoo's wake shield facilities. It dragged Sadeq and his cramped space station out to Jupiter in just four months, surfing on the solar breeze. His presence may be a triumph for the umma, but he feels acutely alone out here: When he turns his compact observatory's mirrors in the direction of the Sanger, he is struck by its size and purposeful appearance. Sanger's superior size speaks of the efficiency of the Western financial instruments, semiautonomous investment trusts with variable business-cycle accounting protocols that make possible the development of commercial space exploration. The Prophet, peace be unto him, may have condemned usury; but it might well have given him pause to see these engines of capital formation demonstrate their power above the Great Red Spot.

After finishing his prayers, Sadeq spends a couple of precious extra minutes on his mat. He finds meditation comes hard in this environment: Kneel in silence, and you become aware of the hum of ventilation fans, the smell of old socks and sweat, the metallic taste of ozone from the Elektron oxygen generators. It is hard to approach God in this third hand spaceship, a hand-me-down from arrogant Russia to ambitious China, and finally to the religious trustees of Qom, who have better uses for it than any of the heathen states imagine. They've pushed it far, this little toy space station; but who's to say if it is God's intention for humans to live here, in orbit around this swollen alien giant of a planet?

Sadeq shakes his head; he rolls his mat up and stows it beside the solitary porthole with a quiet sigh. A stab of homesickness wrenches at him, for his childhood in hot, dusty Yazd and his many years as a student in Qom: He steadies himself by looking round, searching the station that is now as familiar to him as the fourth-floor concrete apartment his parents – a car factory worker and his wife – raised him in. The interior of the station is the size of a school bus, every surface cluttered with storage areas, instrument consoles, and layers of exposed pipes. A couple of globules of antifreeze jiggle like stranded jellyfish near a heat exchanger that has been giving him grief. Sadeq kicks off in search of the squeeze bottle he keeps for this purpose, then gathers up his roll of tools and instructs one of his agents to find him the relevant part of the maintenance log: it's time to fix the leaky joint for good.

An hour or so of serious plumbing and he will eat freeze-dried lamb stew, with a paste of lentils and boiled rice, and a bulb of strong tea to wash it down, then sit down to review his next fly-by maneuvering sequence. Perhaps, God willing, there will be no further system alerts and he'll be able to spend an hour or two on his research between evening and final prayers. Maybe the day after tomorrow there'll even be time to relax for a couple of hours, to watch one of the old movies that he finds so fascinating for their insights into alien cultures: Apollo Thirteen, perhaps. It isn't easy, being the crew aboard a long-duration space mission. It's even harder for Sadeq, up here alone with nobody to talk to, for the communications lag to earth is more than half an hour each way – and as far as he knows, he's the only believer within half a billion kilometers.

[TheFountain]

I know it is fashionable to lump all of the Abrahamic faiths into one lump nowadays, but we are talking many orders of magnitude difference between some present-day sections of the muslim world and the vast majority of Christians and Jews. When I bring up the old testament (slavery/men superior to women) in debates with people the standard talking point nowadays is "god didn't mean it that way" (which of course brings in all kinds of other logical problems....a different debate). The fellow you reference in the article still thinks and acts like it is 500AD.

Dennett says the West should be careful to not spread our "destructive" viral memes to the muslim world (freedom, tolerance, women's rights, porn, entertainment). That would work just fine if they would return the favor, but as you see in the article quoted above, they are not content to just sit in their corner of the world and oppress women, they want to spread Sharia law around the world. Thus it is a clash of cultures.

I think that clash of cultures has a little something to do with how dipped in their affairs the U.S has been for the past century. How many military bases does the U.S have in other countries around the world? How many military bases do they have here? Case rested.

[TheFountain]

I know it is fashionable to lump all of the Abrahamic faiths into one lump nowadays, but we are talking many orders of magnitude difference between some present-day sections of the muslim world and the vast majority of Christians and Jews. When I bring up the old testament (slavery/men superior to women) in debates with people the standard talking point nowadays is "god didn't mean it that way" (which of course brings in all kinds of other logical problems....a different debate). The fellow you reference in the article still thinks and acts like it is 500AD.

Dennett says the West should be careful to not spread our "destructive" viral memes to the muslim world (freedom, tolerance, women's rights, porn, entertainment). That would work just fine if they would return the favor, but as you see in the article quoted above, they are not content to just sit in their corner of the world and oppress women, they want to spread Sharia law around the world. Thus it is a clash of cultures.

I think that clash of cultures has a little something to do with how dipped in their affairs the U.S has been for the past century. How many military bases does the U.S have in other countries around the world? How many military bases do they have here? Case rested.

[TheFountain]

And on top of it all the united states began with the all but complete genocide of a native population. I believe in generational Karma. And I do not think that going to war with a nation that cannot defend itself, causing the death of hundreds of thousands of its citizens, women and children, justifies a smugness regarding 'our attempt' to spread so called freedom and democracy.

[SATANICAT]

There's always the extreme. I think everybody here will get a kick out of this

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3mDLsyn6ns

IT'S DORK SIDED.


It's the extreme stereotype of women from the place I call home - the South of the USA.