From: extropy@theogeny.com
Date: Thu Sep 20 2001 - 07:12:44 MDT
>By muslim society, a girl who has premarital sex is not innocent.
>By muslim society, a person who supports an infidel who fights to be
>treated equally is not innocent. In muslim society, there are believers,
>and there are infidels. Infidels are second class citizens, and do not
>have the right to be treated like believers, though there is lip service
>to other 'children of the book' (jews and christians). An infidel who insists
>on asserting their rights over those of a believer is automatically wrong.
Is this something you know, something you've read, something you
heard on the news? How many muslim societies have you lived in?
If we want to be able to do a rational analysis of the situation,
we need actual facts.
What actually happens to girls who have premarital sex in, say,
Indonesia (the world's biggest Muslim country)? Do Muslims
automatically win in court there if the other party is non-Muslim?
Or is this all just stuff that you heard somewhere once? Do
you think that if Pat Robertson or Jerry Falwell were running a
"Christian" government, that Christians would *not* be (for
instance) the only ones entitled to hold public office?
Do you know what the penalty is in the Christian Bible for a
man who doesn't listen to his parents? Death by stoning (Deut 21).
Do you know what the penalty is in the Christian Bible for a woman
whose husband discovers she isn't a virgin? Death by stoning (Deut
22). Do you know what the penalty is in the Christian Bible for a
betrothed virgin who is raped? Death by stoning (Deut 22).
That's the penalty for the *victim*.
As I said before, you can find nasty stuff in any religion's
holy writings. You can also find nasty behavior in any modern
society. But as far as I know the main problem with Muslim
theocracies is that they're *theocracies*, not that they're Muslim...
>By muslim law, infidels are not presumed to be innocent until proven
>guilty, they are guilty until proven innocent.
Are you suggesting that it would be different in a country ruled by
"Christian law"? You seem to be blaming Islam for lots of vices that
it shares with the other Big Ancient Religions. I think it's a real
bad idea to base a government around Islam, or *any other religion*.
I see no rational reason to single out Islam on this score. To my
mind, stressing that *Islamic* theocracy is a bad idea just obscures
the more important point, that theocracy in general is a bad idea.
I have no evidence that a tamed and secularized Islam would be any
worse (or any better!) than the tamed and secularized Christianity
and Judaism that pervade the West.
As Extropians, are we merely anti-Islamic? Or are we pro-reason
and anti-superstition in whatever form?
DC
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