DescentBB

I wasn't sure where to put this up but since it concerns social/cultural matters E&C seems to fit. IMVHO the article is less discusson than informative material -- at least that's my take on it.

http://service.spiegel.de/cache/interna ... 74,00.html

"The Whore Lived Like a German"

By Jody K. Biehl in Berlin

In the past four months, six Muslim women living in Berlin have been brutally murdered by family members. Their crime? Trying to break free and live Western lifestyles. Within their communities, the killers are revered as heroes for preserving their family dignity. How can such a horrific and shockingly archaic practice be flourishing in the heart of Europe? The deaths have sparked momentary outrage, but will they change the grim reality for Muslim women? ..

I have faith that the Muslim lifestyle will eventually completely self distruct.

Let them keep killing their women and eventually all that will be left are the men folk. Then they can fornicate with each other with the resulting issue being the real turds they don't believe they are.

This kind of reaction, from what I am guessing are more fundamentalist Islamic views, are hardly representative of the whole of Islam. The problem I see with the heirarchical structure, or lack thereof, within Islam is that some schools of religious thought condone and support this kind of behavior whereas others do not, and there does not seems to be any kind of concensus for Muslims on a 'standard' interpretation of their scriptures. Am I mistaken in this regard?? In Christianity it seems that there are a few major interpretations that are considered authoritative, and a vast difference in influence over the occasional fringe christian cult who pick and choose a doctrine of choice and elevate it to primary status, in obvious contradiction to other teachings of Christianity.

go muslim hate..

oy.

dissent wrote:This kind of reaction, from what I am guessing are more fundamentalist Islamic views, are hardly representative of the whole of Islam.
...there does not seems to be any kind of concensus for Muslims on a 'standard' interpretation of their scriptures. Am I mistaken in this regard??

You're right, this kind of violence is from fundamentalist Muslim teaching, and doesn't necessarily reflect the whole of Islam...

page 2 wrote:The response among Germany's devout Muslims is equally tough to gauge as there is no single organization the community looks to for leadership. Instead, the community is divided into about three dozen groups, each with its own leadership. Ali Kizilkaya, the chairman of the Council of Islam, one of the largest umbrella organizations, has decried Hatin's murder as "an abuse and affront to the Muslim religion." He insists Islam does not condone honor killings.

...but it's disturbing that this way of thinking seems to be on the rise in that area. I mean, just look at the quotes from the Turkish students on page two. Without an over-arching organization to denounce the violence, I'm not sure that the situation will get any better anytime soon.

I just got this in my inbox:
*********
Two Arabs are sitting in a Gaza Strip bar chatting over a pint of fermented goat's milk. One pulls his wallet out and starts flipping through pictures and they start reminiscing.

"This is my oldest son, he's a martyr." "You must be so proud" says the other.

"This is my second son. He is a martyr also." "A fine looking young man", replies his friend.

After a pause and a deep sigh, the second Arab says wistfully, "They blow up so fast, don't they?"
**********

It's not that I think it's funny but it sort of displays the frustration we have in the west for even trying to understand the islamikazi's

There's another saying Will.
There is no muslum mother of a new born babe that plans for her child to blow themselves up one day.

woodchip wrote:There's another saying Will.
There is no muslum mother of a new born babe that plans for her child to blow themselves up one day.

There is the rub because I'm not convinced that's true.

Will Robinson wrote:

woodchip wrote:There's another saying Will.
There is no muslum mother of a new born babe that plans for her child to blow themselves up one day.

There is the rub because I'm not convinced that's true.

If you are right Will, then heaven help muslum people for their faith has been twisted beyond all normal understanding.

Very well-written article.

All forms of extremism are misguided: fundamentalist Christian, or extreme Islamist - it's the same.

The only way forwward is to get rid of ALL extremist beliefs.

... especially extremist anti-religionism.

How about, instead of quickly bashing the religion, which does have quite a bit of weirdness to it, we try to understand exactly what causes them to hate us so incredibly much that they'd kill their own family members. It's not because "they're crazy sick people"..I'd say the same thing right now about Lothar, but I wouldn't expect him to kill anyone. He's harmless, his religion has taught him well, I'm the only one he'd try to harm

What are we doing here in the western world to piss these people off so much? Our blatant flaunting of sex? Violence? Money? If we don't figure the root of the problem, as I really don't think we will, this will never end. Nunca.

Zuruck wrote:How about... we try to understand exactly what causes them to hate us so incredibly much

Lothar, on the [url=http://forums.warpcore.org/Forum1/HTML/000849.html]IDL forum[/url] on September 18, 2001 wrote:The reason we are hated in that part of the world is because of ISRAEL.
... [also]
It is because of our morality. Islamic code is very legalistic (by this I mean, it's very much by-the-book and by-the-letter.) It is very specific about clothing women in certain ways, oppressing them in certain ways, praying in certain ways, and so forth. American culture is not just different from that, but in may ways, absolutely counter to that.

Not my best piece of writing ever, but I think I pretty well nailed it. (Read it in context -- there's a lot of clarification that goes on in the next few posts.)

dissent wrote:The problem I see with the heirarchical structure, or lack thereof, within Islam is that some schools of religious thought condone and support this kind of behavior whereas others do not, and there does not seems to be any kind of concensus for Muslims on a 'standard' interpretation of their scriptures.

In Christianity, there really isn't an overarching heirarchy to speak of (outside of the Catholics, anyway.) There are influential figures like the Pope, James Dobson, and various leaders of individual denominations, but most of Christian theology is set through debate among theologians. Different interpretations sort of compete in the free market of ideas -- and if individuals buy into what one denomination or another says, that denomination gets more members. Over thousands of years of debate, it's pretty well settled what theological views are reasonable vs. which are total crap. There's still discussion about which view (among the set of reasonable views) is right on some issues, but the most wacky ideas have pretty much been filtered out because individuals have rejected them.

With Islam, there seems to be a lot more structure. There are individual sects, but clerics within each sect have a lot more power over their groups than most Christian leaders (not counting the Pope). They have the power to tell people what to believe, and furthermore, in many cases they have the power to enforce it through the government or intimidation. If a sect endorses violence, and also has control of a government and influence over a lot of people, they're going to cause major problems.

Now, I think another major issue is that Islam is both a religion and a political philosophy. This makes it much more like (ancient) Judaism than Christianity. Ancient Jewish scriptures (the Old Testament) set up a government system, and the religion was strongly tied to that government system for as long as the government survived. Furthermore, the Jewish government system was a pretty reasonable and nonviolent one that treated every Jew (male, female, young, old, etc.) as a human being. Christian scriptures (the New Testament) don't set up any government system. Rather, they tell people to live righteously in whatever situation they're in. Again, it's a nonviolent system that treats everyone as human (even non-Christians.) Islam, on the other hand, describes everything in life in detail -- it tells you how to wipe your butt, how to prepare your food, and how to set up the government. Rather unfortunately, it's tied to a 7th century philosophy of government, which is rooted in conquest of other nations, subjugation of women, etc.

Understanding this, it's pretty obvious why at least some sects of Islam continue to engage in violence against women (as well as in violence against the US.) Extremist Christians can pretty well be smacked down using their own scriptures ("love your enemies", etc.) and rendered powerless, while extremist Muslims are harder for the non-extremists to deal with and they hold a decent amount of power. It's hard to stop people from acting like it's the 7th century when they can make their own scriptures justify it...

Zuruck wrote: we try to understand exactly what causes them to hate us so incredibly much that they'd kill their own family members.

In the killing of family members, it is not so much muslums hating us, it is more about going against their religion. It is sad that because you are born muslum, you can never leave...except in a casket.

Lothar wrote:Now, I think another major issue is that Islam is both a religion and a political philosophy. This makes it much more like (ancient) Judaism than Christianity. Ancient Jewish scriptures (the Old Testament) set up a government system, and the religion was strongly tied to that government system for as long as the government survived. Furthermore, the Jewish government system was a pretty reasonable and nonviolent one that treated every Jew (male, female, young, old, etc.) as a human being. Christian scriptures (the New Testament) don't set up any government system. Rather, they tell people to live righteously in whatever situation they're in. Again, it's a nonviolent system that treats everyone as human (even non-Christians.) Islam, on the other hand, describes everything in life in detail -- it tells you how to wipe your butt, how to prepare your food, and how to set up the government. Rather unfortunately, it's tied to a 7th century philosophy of government, which is rooted in conquest of other nations, subjugation of women, etc.

Understanding this, it's pretty obvious why at least some sects of Islam continue to engage in violence against women (as well as in violence against the US.) Extremist Christians can pretty well be smacked down using their own scriptures ("love your enemies", etc.) and rendered powerless, while extremist Muslims are harder for the non-extremists to deal with and they hold a decent amount of power. It's hard to stop people from acting like it's the 7th century when they can make their own scriptures justify it...

OK, so this then may indeed be the crux of the problem (to coin a phrase). I hadn't thought in these terms. So, I think it may be fair to say that Christianity DID go through a phase like this, when church and the state were essentially one, but at present there are typically separations between the Christian (read:Western) religious and political structures. Curious that this is once again (?) becoming more common in the Islamic world. Would it be possible to argue that during the European Dark Ages, when Islamic culture and sciences flourished, that Islamic political structures were more secular with respect the the religious sphere - or is this simply my ignorance of Islamic history (from the fall of Rome to about 1300 AD) showing. Very probably the latter. So maybe we're seeing more of this backlash to 'westernism' now because western culture is so pervasive, thanks in great measure to technology, and in opposition to perceived Islamic values, and some individuals now, thanks in great measure to technology, have the ability to react to these threats to their values.

Woodchip, you're correct, but you missed my point. I know they killed their family members because they went against their religion. But what has our way of life done to these people to where they will kill their own if they act the way we do. I'm not saying we have to change our lives to make someone else happy, I'm merely saying that this is a fight we cannot win with smart bombs, pys ops, and liberating all these countries. What is the problem? From what Lothar said and he's correct, a lot of it is probably Israel, but is that the only thing? I don't know, I'm not privy to all kinds of info nor do I intend to write my thesis on this topic.