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steinrokkan posted:Three out of five Muslim girls are developmentally challenged, without teeth and with no control over their slack jaw. 
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Sep 25, 2015 15:52
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what is your explanation as to why the quran is so repetitive it must mention how allah is all merciful about 10 000 times over the 114 surah, usually immediately after saying how unbelievers will be punished (in addition to the rote recitation at the start of each surah) if it is the direct word of god then having to remind people about his great qualities so much must mean that god is really insecure
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Sep 25, 2015 16:24
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Neurosis posted:what is your explanation as to why the quran is so repetitive *reviews notes* yeah that checks out
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Sep 25, 2015 16:27
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1/4 dedicated to telling you god is merciful, 1/2 devoted to telling you how unbelievers have a terrible fate which will be meted out at the appointed time, the remainder kind of some stories here and there i guess and rules about when it is okay to beat your wife
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Sep 25, 2015 16:31
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Neurosis posted:1/4 dedicated to telling you god is merciful, 1/2 devoted to telling you how unbelievers have a terrible fate which will be meted out at the appointed time, the remainder kind of some stories here and there i guess and rules about when it is okay to beat your wife not "rules" so much as vague references to it that not everyone even agrees are referring to physical violence. but some people are certainly under the impression that it's in there. and yet 
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Sep 25, 2015 16:37
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lotta women there
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Sep 25, 2015 16:44
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As to those women on whose part ye fear disloyalty and ill-conduct, admonish them (first), (Next), refuse to share their beds, (And last) beat them (lightly); but if they return to obedience, seek not against them Means (of annoyance): For Allah is Most High, great (above you all). that's the yusuf ali translation. i had a look at some of the others for that particular passage and i don't see a little wiggle room since they're all about as unambiguous as that is.. edit: some of the others As for those from whom ye fear rebellion, admonish them and banish them to beds apart, and scourge them. Then if they obey you, seek not a way against them. Lo! Allah is ever High Exalted, Great. (Pickthall) As for those from whom you fear disobedience, admonish them and forsake them in beds apart, and beat them. Then if they obey you, take no further action against them. Surely God is high, supreme. (Dawood) (as to) those on whose part you fear desertion, admonish them, and leave them alone in their sleeping places and beat them; then if they obey you, do not seek a way against them; surely Allah is High, Great. (M.H. Shakir) Neurosis fucked around with this message at 16:50 on Sep 25, 2015 |
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Sep 25, 2015 16:47
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Sikhism is superior to Islam since it consider other religions to be worshipping the same universal god, so there's no reason to go on killing sprees and also the forbids of the separation of men/women at places of worship.
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Sep 25, 2015 17:21
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Neurosis posted:As to those women on whose part ye fear disloyalty and ill-conduct, admonish them (first), (Next), refuse to share their beds, (And last) beat them (lightly); but if they return to obedience, seek not against them Means (of annoyance): For Allah is Most High, great (above you all). Yeah, I don't have a good enough grasp of Arabic to know what the Quran actually says and whether the word in question would best translate to "scourge" or "beat", which is why I simply reported that there's no universal consensus on whether that passage actually approves of domestic violence or not. Of course, if I come to the conclusion that it does, that isn't going to change my mind about whether it's okay or not. it isn't news to me that I don't have the same value system as people did in the seventh century. 
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Sep 25, 2015 17:49
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Neurosis posted:what is your explanation as to why the quran is so repetitive Firstly because it was originally orally transmitted, and textual repetition is an aid to memory. Secondly because it was "revealed "in context-dependent, staggered iterations which were probably never intended to be collected into a unified whole. This also explains the lack of cohesion of the text in individual surahs (they were assembled in a rather ad hoc manner according to loose thematic relations, and without any considerations for aesthetics), the shifts in style from the Meccan to Medinian surahs (the "occasions of revelation" shifted with the political concerns of the times) and the oddly ephemeral nature of some of its pronouncements (like how we are to behave in front of the prophet's wives and in his home). TacticalUrbanHomo posted:Yeah, I don't have a good enough grasp of Arabic to know what the Quran actually says and whether the word in question would best translate to "scourge" or "beat", which is why I simply reported that there's no universal consensus on whether that passage actually approves of domestic violence or not. Yes, this is obviously a passage that requires a lot of exegetical finesse. I would be so embarrassed if I'd been scourging my wife all this time were it to turn out I was only permitted to beat her. quote:Of course, if I come to the conclusion that it does, that isn't going to change my mind about whether it's okay or not. it isn't news to me that I don't have the same value system as people did in the seventh century. Is it as simple as that? I agree that the Qur'an is a product of its time, and that it would be unfair to judge the text by the standards of 21st century morality, but isn't the Qur'an held by more than a billion Muslims to be the immutable word of God? Isn't this claim as central to the Muslim faith as the Christian claim that Jesus was resurrected, or the Jewish claim that Jews have formed a unique covenant with God? I've seen Muslim exegetes argue themselves out of difficult Quranic passages by subjecting them tortuously contrived interpretations of the terms involved, but never by suggesting that the Qur'an is just a product of parochial 7th century concerns without any truly universal application. If that's truly the case, then what does Islam actually have to offer to anyone today? Blurred fucked around with this message at 18:43 on Sep 25, 2015 |
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Sep 25, 2015 18:39
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yeah those are the reasons i thought; i was interested to see what might be postulated as a reason though if one were to believe it was the revealed word of god rather than the ramblings of a fat illiterate warlord
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Sep 25, 2015 18:51
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Blurred posted:Yes, this is obviously a passage that requires a lot of exegetical finesse. I would be so embarrassed if I'd been scourging my wife all this time were it to turn out I was only permitted to beat her. But the original word isn't "scourge" or "beat". The original word is an Arabic word that was written in the early seventh century. You'd need to be more than fluent in Arabic to make an informed judgment on the exact meaning, you'd need to also be familiar with the contemporary vernacular. the fact that the actual faqih who study islamic law for a living don't have a general consensus on the exact meaning of this particular verse would seem to indicate that, yes, it does require "a lot of exegetical finesse". perusing some actual published fatwa and notes on fatwa regarding this verse, the opinions on it are varied and fascinating. some faqih are of the opinion that the term used is a word with no english equivalent, that refers to a purely symbolic "tap" that is not meant to inflict harm or physical pain of any kind but to display a feeling of scorn or shame with one's spouse. some are insistent that it does in fact endorse corporal punishment, but even they are unable to agree on the degree implied (or whether one is). and then there's one faqih from pakistan who, in an english translation, rendered the verse as not permitting any form of corporal punishment, but in an uurdu translation renders it as expressly permitting beating. Blurred posted:Is it as simple as that? I agree that the Qur'an is a product of its time, and that it would be unfair to judge the text by the standards of 21st century morality, but isn't the Qur'an held by more than a billion Muslims to be the immutable word of God? Isn't this claim as central to the Muslim faith as the Christian claim that Jesus was resurrected, or the Jewish claim that Jews have formed a unique covenant with God? I've seen Muslim exegetes argue themselves out of difficult Quranic passages by subjecting them tortuously contrived interpretations of the terms involved, but never by suggesting that the Qur'an is just a product of parochial 7th century concerns without any truly universal application. If that's truly the case, then what does Islam actually have to offer to anyone today? absolutely nothing is truly immutable, and standards have always changed, even the prophet pbuh acknowledged that. I can't point to a single verse or hadith supporting this (insofar as I can't point to a single tree to locate a forest) and at the moment I really don't feel like dredging through the quran and hadith to find a lot of them (though I definitely might later on) but, while certainly not progressive by our standards, it's clear that the prophet pbuh found the way women were treated in mecca during his time appalling. I'm not saying that to try to assert some kind of "muhammad was a feminist all along" narrative since I clearly just said that isn't the case, my point here is merely that times change. in another example, there was a time when human sacrifice was rendered to YWHW. now, this is very, very haram. I would contend that nothing is immutable. everything, our civilisation, our species, our planet, our galaxy, even the entire material universe, absolutely everything changes and eventually passes away. the most islamic thing a person can do is try to find the way to be truest to allah in the time and place they find themselves in. there's mountains of theological research and fatwa that have been written over the centuries on the importance of personal conscience in islam, though obviously these are not held universally in regard. on the other hand, there aren't very many muslims who would seriously try to assert that the earth is flat. TacticalUrbanHomo fucked around with this message at 19:06 on Sep 25, 2015 |
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Sep 25, 2015 19:04
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god is a way we personify our highest ideals and values. prayer, meditation, and penitance are a ritualised attempt at overcoming our baser natures to achieve these. if you're not using religion to try to do that, but instead to affirm your baser nature, what is the point? I mean if you're someone who flies into a rage and beats his wife and then insists that allah says this is your right as a husband to do, who is that really helping? what is that accomplishing other than assuaging your guilt at inflicting pointless pain on your family and, presumably, yourself? just, imo.
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Sep 25, 2015 19:11
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TacticalUrbanHomo posted:But the original word isn't "scourge" or "beat". The original word is an Arabic word that was written in the early seventh century. You'd need to be more than fluent in Arabic to make an informed judgment on the exact meaning, you'd need to also be familiar with the contemporary vernacular. the fact that the actual faqih who study islamic law for a living don't have a general consensus on the exact meaning of this particular verse would seem to indicate that, yes, it does require "a lot of exegetical finesse". I don't want to belabour the point, because obviously neither of us are trained in classical Arabic or skilled enough to comment definitively on this issue, but I do want to make a more general point about the interpretation of holy texts that I've learnt from studying the Bible. Basically, when confronted with a problematic passage, its exceedingly common for exegetes to make special pleadings for a particular interpretation of a term, when a more natural one is available. By "natural" I mean an interpretation that 1) is consistent with the context in which the term is found and 2) is an interpretation that fits equally well when applied to other contexts in which the term is used in the wider text. In the case we're talking about, the word used in Q 4:34 is idrib, apparently an imperative form of the root verb "drb". So in relation to 1), the context in which the verb is found relates to the procedure for dealing with disobedient wives, and seems to prescribe a fairly natural escalation of punishments for so long as the disobedience continues: "[T]hose [wives] from whom you fear arrogance - [first] advise them; [then if they persist], forsake them in bed; and [finally], strike them." If we take the verb idrib here to mean something like "symbolically tap", then the final, culminating step of matrimonial discipline reads as something of a damp squib: are we really to imagine that a "symbolic tap" represents a more forceful solution than advising or forsaking? That this really represents the final recourse of a dishonoured husband in the context of a deeply patriarchal culture? In relation to 2), the verb idrib - according to this Quranic concordance - appears 12 times in the Qur'an, in the following ayat:  There is plainly a restricted metaphorical use for the term available (namely to "strike a similitude") but all the other uses would appear to imply a fairly unambiguous injunction to "hit" or "strike", and which would make little sense if we were to translate the term as "tap symbolically". (Take Q 8:12, 13 - " '.....I will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieved, so symbolically tap them upon the necks and symbolically tap from them every fingertip'... indeed, Allah is severe in penalty.") So, taken together, a reading of Q 4:34 which employs any translation other than something closely approximating "strike" is deeply unnatural in the sense that it is dissonant with 1) the context in which the word is found and 2) the way in which the word is used in other contexts in the Qur'an. Some sincere advice: liberal exegetes are as susceptible to the blinders of personal ideology as the conservative ones. quote:absolutely nothing is truly immutable, and standards have always changed, even the prophet pbuh acknowledged that. I can't point to a single verse or hadith supporting this (insofar as I can't point to a single tree to locate a forest) and at the moment I really don't feel like dredging through the quran and hadith to find a lot of them (though I definitely might later on) but, while certainly not progressive by our standards, it's clear that the prophet pbuh found the way women were treated in mecca during his time appalling. I'm not saying that to try to assert some kind of "muhammad was a feminist all along" narrative since I clearly just said that isn't the case, my point here is merely that times change. in another example, there was a time when human sacrifice was rendered to YWHW. now, this is very, very haram. But if Islam (or religion, or beliefs most generally) are mere matters of "personal conscience" then the decision to become a Muslim, a Christian, a Hindu or an atheist becomes a matter of profound indifference, does it not? If Islam, as a body of belief and praxis, can claim no exceptional insight into the human condition, and falters from the same conceptual limitations as every other system of belief and praxis, then what benefit is conferred by calling oneself a Muslim? I honestly admire your equanimity, but I think most Muslims (and Christians, and Hindus, and...) would disagree with you on this point. Every religion posits an immutable, exceptionalist doctrine of sorts, and there would be no reason for them to exist if they didn't. If I believed that Islam was nothing more than an admirable attempt to come to terms with the complexities of the world given the restrictions of a 7th century world-view, what possible reason would I have to choose it over any other in the 21st century? Why should I take their approach to theology any more seriously than their approach to medicine or cosmology? Perhaps the theology encapsulated in the shahada is precisely as antiquated and dispensable as the Qur'anic attitude to women? TacticalUrbanHomo posted:god is a way we personify our highest ideals and values. prayer, meditation, and penitance are a ritualised attempt at overcoming our baser natures to achieve these. if you're not using religion to try to do that, but instead to affirm your baser nature, what is the point? I mean if you're someone who flies into a rage and beats his wife and then insists that allah says this is your right as a husband to do, who is that really helping? what is that accomplishing other than assuaging your guilt at inflicting pointless pain on your family and, presumably, yourself? just, imo. Again I agree entirely, but self-justificatory spirals are pretty difficult to avoid in religious morality. It's a form of what Hans-Georg Gadamer termed the "hermeneutic circle". One comes to a certain text with certain pre-conceptions, one finds passages in the text which confirm those pre-conceptions, one returns to the text once more with fortified pre-conceptions, again finds confirming passages (while overlooking discomfiting passages, of course) and on and on it goes. If one places undue faith in a particular authority, the process becomes even more exaggerated. Believers in God will invariably assume that God agrees with them on key moral issues, will find confirming remarks in the relevant traditions or in their earthly representatives, will consider themselves vindicated and will abandon the search for anything which may have challenged their intuited moral beliefs, and therefore the possibility of ever developing themselves morally. God is not a way out of this vicious hermeneutic circle, it's the fastest way of spiralling into it. Quibbling over Arabic lexicography won't get you anywhere with fundamentalists who believe they are infused with the spirit of God; such a person has already affirmed their "base nature" insofar as they feel that the vicissitudes of the world are a mere distraction to their ongoing justification in the eyes of God. They can beat their wives because they start with the premise that the sole moral arbiter in the universe is (conveniently enough) always with them. So long as they are allowed to believe that, the possibility of any meaningful conversation about the propriety of their actions is completely unthinkable. Anyway... I'll spare you the rant. I'll just stress that it's probably best not to presume that all religious people have the same noble, spiritually-oriented goals that you do. Make sure you've given yourself enough philosophical and theological space to criticise them.
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Sep 25, 2015 21:38
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Blurred posted:I don't want to belabour the point, because obviously neither of us are trained in classical Arabic or skilled enough to comment definitively on this issue, but I do want to make a more general point about the interpretation of holy texts that I've learnt from studying the Bible. Basically, when confronted with a problematic passage, its exceedingly common for exegetes to make special pleadings for a particular interpretation of a term, when a more natural one is available. By "natural" I mean an interpretation that 1) is consistent with the context in which the term is found and 2) is an interpretation that fits equally well when applied to other contexts in which the term is used in the wider text. Why not? symbols can be very powerful. imagine, in our culture, a woman taking off her wedding ring. I'm not a seventh century Arab nor a scholar of that culture so I can't personally vouch for the veracity of that claim but it certainly doesn't seem impossible. fwiw, there's a hadith where a group of men are imploring muhammad pbuh for permission to strike their wives because they are being unruly and rebellious, and eventually the prophet grants it. then some of the men's wives complain that their husbands have harmed them, and the prophet pbuh admonishes the men for this. of course, the veracity of any given hadith is also up for debate. quote:In relation to 2), the verb idrib - according to this Quranic concordance - appears 12 times in the Qur'an, in the following ayat: which is why I'm not endorsing the liberal interpretation of the verse. I don't think this verse is particularly consequential either way; I'm not going to consult it for marital advice whether I think it endorses violence or not. quote:But if Islam (or religion, or beliefs most generally) are mere matters of "personal conscience" then the decision to become a Muslim, a Christian, a Hindu or an atheist becomes a matter of profound indifference, does it not? as far as I can tell, yeah. be religious if you want to be, whichever one, or none, w/e.
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Sep 25, 2015 21:54
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Sep 25, 2015 21:58
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"I am an anime...!?" TacticalUrbanHomo fucked around with this message at 22:04 on Sep 25, 2015 |
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Sep 25, 2015 21:59
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Sep 25, 2015 22:09
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TacticalUrbanHomo posted:Why not? symbols can be very powerful. imagine, in our culture, a woman taking off her wedding ring. I'm not a seventh century Arab nor a scholar of that culture so I can't personally vouch for the veracity of that claim but it certainly doesn't seem impossible. It's possible, sure, but it's not the most natural reading. If the original author had meant to advocate a merely "symbolic tap" then I can only wonder why he/she didn't disambiguate the sentiment by using a word that doesn't, in other contexts, quite clearly mean "to strike". I understand that classical Arabic was a fairly restrictive language (given its relatively recent emergence as a language of poetry) but surely it wasn't that restrictive that the author couldn't find a more appropriate word to use given his/her intentions. To use an example from the Bible: there are some who believe that the Hebrew word yom - which unambiguously means "day" in other parts of the Bible - can be translated in Genesis 1 as "long aeons of time". Their motivation is quite transparent: to square the Biblical account of creation with our scientific knowledge that the universe formed over a much longer period than the "6 days" apparently indicated by the Torah. I won't go into the arguments and counter-arguments for this interpretation, I'll just point out that the Hebrews had the vocabulary to designate times far longer than "a day" (years, generations etc.) and were capable of representing numbers at least into the hundreds of thousands. So, if the authors of Genesis 1 had truly meant to say that the universe was created over a very long time, why didn't they say something like "in the first hundreds of thousands of generations" rather than "on the first day"? For this reason, and others I won't bore you with here, the translation of yom into the English "day" is a far more natural one than the convoluted translation offered by liberal exegetes. I think the same logic can be applied to the use of the imperative idrib in Q 4:34. If they meant something purely "symbolic", why did they nakedly use a term that - in other contexts (e.g. Q 8:12) - refers unambiguously to an act of very literal violence? quote:fwiw, there's a hadith where a group of men are imploring muhammad pbuh for permission to strike their wives because they are being unruly and rebellious, and eventually the prophet grants it. then some of the men's wives complain that their husbands have harmed them, and the prophet pbuh admonishes the men for this. of course, the veracity of any given hadith is also up for debate. Yeah, maybe we can save debate about the veracity of hadiths for a bit later.  quote:which is why I'm not endorsing the liberal interpretation of the verse. I don't think this verse is particularly consequential either way; I'm not going to consult it for marital advice whether I think it endorses violence or not. Well, it's consequential because: 1) There are people who take the Qur'an to be the literal, immutable word of God; and 2) They interpret this passage (with some justification) as advocating the propriety of spousal violence. The Qur'an cannot cause someone to be a violent spouse abuser (such an attitude is one of the pre-textual, "pre-conceptions" I mentioned in my previous post) but it can certainly make one feel justified in being a spouse abuser. One can point to other Quranic passages or hadiths as overturning a passage like Q 4:34, but then all you're really doing is butressing the authority of the Islamic traditions on which they have already constructed their self-serving justifications. Honest question: on what grounds would you appeal to such a person and show them what they are doing is wrong? quote:as far as I can tell, yeah. be religious if you want to be, whichever one, or none, w/e. Okay, will do.
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Sep 25, 2015 22:28
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Blurred posted:Honest question: on what grounds would you appeal to such a person and show them what they are doing is wrong? if he's legitimately abusive then there probably is no hope of reasoning with him imo and I should probably just cut off his head
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Sep 25, 2015 22:51
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etalian posted:Sikhism is superior to Islam since it consider other religions to be worshipping the same universal god, so there's no reason to go on killing sprees and also the forbids of the separation of men/women at places of worship. Sikhism is cool as a religion, but its unfortunate that historically they've been the lapdogs of imperialism.
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Sep 26, 2015 00:18
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etalian posted:Sikhism is superior to Islam since it consider other religions to be worshipping the same universal god, so there's no reason to go on killing sprees and also the forbids of the separation of men/women at places of worship. I thought they went on killing sprees anyway since the one ethnic group are proud warriors.
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Sep 26, 2015 00:42
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computer parts posted:I thought they went on killing sprees anyway since the one ethnic group are proud warriors. Peace be upon them
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Sep 26, 2015 01:00
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Agag posted:Sikhism is cool as a religion, but its unfortunate that historically they've been the lapdogs of imperialism. ya if you are a minority and also disciplined warriors you made out OK under the british empire. perks if you can keep the majority working for the raj
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Sep 26, 2015 01:18
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