This quote is from truth post #54 midnight. Didn't you see it? I'm sure you noticed the post because you went on to quote from it. Conveniently, you did not quote the part that I did. Instead you went on to act as though truth never decried the goings on about taslima, when in fact he did. Why did you do that?
Because it was a qualified statement. Because he said, "
Only in the part involving religion and what they did was plain wrong." Because he said, "[Islam] doesn't support the killing of innocent people
simply for stating their opinions." Because he also said that the people who called for Taslima's death were provoked. Because also said that she should not have published her opinions. Because he spent a lot of time defending the people calling for her death, and no time at all defending Taslima's right to publish her opinions. Because he very carefully and deliberately refused to say that, in these particular circumstances, it was wrong to offer 500,000 rupees for the head of Taslima Nasrin.
Have you all learned nothing from the muslims on this forum? We come from varied backgrounds, yet we all have a non-extreme view of Islam.
Yes, I've learned a lot from you, and I've learned, in particular, what you consider a non-extreme view of Islam. I've learned that you believe it's right for Muslims to force non-Muslims to pay the jizya. I've learned that you think it's right for Muslim countries to have the death penalty for homosexuality, and that you don't think that's repressive because as long as homosexuals hide in the darkness and never admit who they are, they can't be convicted under shariah. I've learned that you think it's right to stone adulterers to death. I've learned that you think it's right to cut off the hands of thieves. And I've learned that you, a woman from Chicago, believe all these things are moderate and non-extreme.
Are hijabs oppressive to muslim women? We answered it no. This answer from women who actually wear the danggone thing, but was that answer worth anything? Nope. Question still persist. Instead of taking the answer to the question, it was like man they must not know they're being oppressed, because they are no matter what they say.
Because we all know how easy it is for oppressed people to justify their oppression. You can go to almost any city or town in the world and find women who are beaten and abused by their husbands, but still believe their husbands love them. You can find gay Mormons and Catholics who feel "liberated" by the harsh restrictions placed on them by their religions. You can find Amish who feel privileged to be denied an education. Everywhere you look, there are women who oppose equal rights for women, and women were in the forefront of the movement to defeat the Equal Rights Amendment in U.S. When I was a child, it was easy to find black people who opposed the Civil Rights movement. I personally know gay men who oppose equal rights for LGBTs. It's so very easy for people to accept and justify their own oppression.
If extreme modesty is such a liberating thing, then why is it a good thing only for women? And how are women treated who decline such "liberation"? Surely, you know as well as I do how women in some Muslim countries are treated when they decline to cover themselves in a chador or a burqa. Surely, you know of the Western, non-Muslim women in the West who have been beaten and raped by Muslim immigrants who then justify their crimes by saying that women who don't observe such oppressive "modesty" are whores who deserve what they get.
If you choose to accept these restrictions, that's one thing. But how do your co-religionists treat women who don't accept them?
We hear again and again how Islam is a religion of peace, but what we see is that Islam is peaceful only to those who accept Islam's repressive rules, that the only real "freedom" women or homosexuals or non-Muslims have under Muslim law is the "freedom" to bow and scrape and hide and live as slaves to Islam.
Truth is nothing will be good enough I think until we abandon Islam altogether, as has been the sugestion so many times on this forum. If maybe we could simply do away with the shariah, or some of the sunnah, or some of Quran, we would be better people.
Yes, I think that's true. Because even the "moderate" and "non-extreme" Muslims defend violence and repression; even you do it. I know that you're not a stupid woman or a violent woman, so what am I supposed to think? It seems from all that you say that you can't be a faithful Muslim without justifying violence and repression. If that's the case, then it would be better to abandon Islam altogether.
People don't react so strongly to the Amish, whose religion is just as irrational and repressive as Islam. In fact, it's unusual for the non-Amish to criticize the Amish, and when someone does dare to criticize them, they themselves are roundly criticized by their fellow "English." Why? Because the Amish are not violent. Because Amish don't believe that they have the right to rule the world. Because the Amish don't practice and justify stoning and dismemberment as commandments of God, even though the same barbarities are found in their own holy book. Because there are no Amish suicide bombers. Because they don't think it glorifies God to slaughter members of other Amish sects.
People react this way to Islam because the behavior of so many Muslims is barbarous and unacceptable, because their fanaticism threatens our civilization and our freedoms. And every time some group of Muslims commit some barbarous act, whether it's the terrorist attacks of 9/11 or the terrorist attacks in London or Madrid or Bali or Amman or Jerusalem or Demsa or Beslan, whether it's the murder of Pim Fortuyn or the murder of Theo van Gogh or the murder of Zilla Huma Usman, or the riots in the France, or the rapes in Scandinavia or the death threats against Ayaan Hirsi Ali or Taslima Nasrin or Salman Rushdie or Robert Redeker or Seyran Ates or Laurette Onkelinkx or Pope Benedict XVI or Geert Wilders or
all Americans or
all Danes -- no matter what depredations are committed by Muslims in the name of Islam, what we hear from "moderate" and "non-extreme" Muslims is a little lukewarm tut-tutting about how unfortunate it is that these poor people feel compelled to do these things, and then a whole lot of condemnation of anybody who dares to associate Islam with Islamic violence. Time and time again, the response of "moderate" Muslims to Muslim religious violence is
not condemnation of the violence, but condemnation of anybody who dares to criticize Islam. Or, as one of your "non-extreme" Muslims on RF says:
if you are not a muslim, you better keep your *precious opinion* to yourself
