BF2S Forums Religions of the world Thread

unnamednewbie13 wrote:

There are groups of Christians who if given the power and influence, would turn back the clock on crime and punishment. There are groups of Muslims who moved to more liberal countries to escape that sort of thing. People can object to parts of a religion they think is harmful to society without becoming xenophobic over it. Not everything is so conveniently black and white no matter how much hardliner nationalists paint it as such.

Of course angry Baptists burning copies of Harry Potter isn't on the same level as women being arrested for riding a bicycle, but again, and for the umpteenth time, the west has already been through this and is still working on equality.

Go on, crack a joke or ask us again why we're "making excuses for Islam."

My local cinema wasn't allowed to show 'The Life of Brian'.

Do you want us all to give you a personal treatise on the historical progress of civilization? Is that your end goal here?

You could just have just asked.

you want to ignore all the parts of the world where islamic civilisation has joined the west. you want to ignore all the parts of the world where christians want to keep women as second class citizens or property. it’s incredibly selective and disingenuous.

haranguing islam for its moral strictures on adultery is just funny. it’s still one of the biggest moral crimes in the domestic sphere in the west. we haven’t totally decriminalised it either. europe and america and the christian world would want to keep it as a crime if it wasn’t for the secular-human rights push in the 1990s. the christian church sure as hell wasn’t doing anything to downgrade its severity (just like it’s never done fucking anything to make women priests, or relieve their burdens and suffering with contraception, childbirth, abortions, etc.). the west has changed its taboos on adultery from criminal to civil law, that’s all. now instead of a light criminal sanction, as in the 1980s and 1990s, you become embroiled in extremely costly sueing for divorce. you have conveniently ignored this point every time i have mentioned. ‘gee, i’d hate to live in a society where the elders decide you have to pay back the offended family’. do you know anything at all about your own fucking litigious society, dipshit? divorce lawyers make bank.

yet because tribal councils still stone people in some of the remotest and most undeveloped places on earth, you want to make out like muslims in istanbul or lahore or cairo are all squirming under this medieval morality where poor women are bludgeoned for their sex. it’s just not the case. you are extremely selective and evidently have not seen the world beyond a toxic subreddit some place.

you think you’re doing muslim women a favour, but you’re not. you’re not willing to understand why someone’s religion and culture can be a positive, self-asserted, self-affirmatory part of their life. no surprises there, because you have no genuine religious faith and you’ve never done anything positive with your ‘catholicism’ except make poses on the internet. for you it’s some role playing costume so you can feel a second-hand thrill of being part of some ‘clash of civilisations’ whilst in a wood-panelled basement in newark, NJ. it’s hopeless trying to explain to you how someone’s identity can genuinely be based in a morality other than your own. muslim women don’t need a slime ball porn subreddit moderator to ‘rescue’ and ‘liberate’ them.

you completely decontextualise the status of rights and gender relations and so on in the west. typical conservative ploy, to try and make out that the historically contingent, things that have been subject to much activism, argument and negotiation and change, have always been thus and are eternal values. women have suffered throughout the 20th century for the rights and equality that they have. many lives were ruined. the picture is not pretty. and now you want to casually claim that the west has amazing attitudes towards women, lol. do you think a feminist would read your shit without raising both her eyebrows? what have you done to make things better for women in the west? cleaning up abusive posts for asa akira is not activism bro. meanwhile you’re full of stupid retrograde shit about ‘good christian housewives’ or whatever. when your remarks about women would likely offend both muslims and ‘modern’ women in the west, it’s probably time to think about your attitudes a little harder.

Last edited by uziq (2020-11-14 02:40:17)

saudi arabia deserves to be a pariah state, it's a shame on the west and the international order that it is not treated as such. it's easy to straightforwardly condemn that country. what's not so easy is to reckon with why the EU, the UK, the US, etc, are so keen to shake MBS's hand and pretend like they're all adults in a room. saudi money and influence is everywhere in the west, which suggests we are also pretty much okay with public beheadings and a country ran by a medieval-theocratic death cult, so long as the business and oil deals keep coming. north korea has been excluded from the international order for less.

iran is regrettable, but considering how heavy a hand the west has had in creating its current state-of-affairs, i'm also hesitant to use it as some 'example' with which to beat the world's muslims. 'look how backwards your religion is! look how illiberal this government is!' exclaims the western person responsible for deposing a liberal government in iran. i think you'll have to spare the world's muslims your outrage: how do you think all this condemnation and fearmongering about iran on the behalf of western liberals/conservatives looks to a moderate muslim? it's a mess almost entirely of our own devising.

Last edited by uziq (2020-11-14 03:06:15)

'a little more complicated?' it's rather the whole story, isn't it? that part of the world sees the far-influence of the united states and the west primarily through the lenses of colonialism and extractive resource capitalism. of course it's easy for the clerical class to turn the lower-orders into religious fanatics.

it remains to be seen what will come of the house of saud's big agendas. i can't imagine that the relationship ahead between them and the clerics will at all be smooth sailing, if MBS is at all genuine in his wishes to pivot to a modern services economy (including heavy green investment). don't most saudi citizens already have a very high provision of public housing and subsidies? if the royal family continue giving the little people even the crumbs of the oil wealth, it'll test a very basic liberal premise: namely that with increasing standard of living comes liberalization of attitudes and beliefs.

Last edited by uziq (2020-11-14 03:30:53)

there have been religious-inflected grassroots movements in latin america and the far-east. what are you talking about? the difference is that they didn't attain a widespread political foothold in their rebellions against the west or dominant regional power.

but of course, the middle-east has a different history to latin america, and religious power is much more concentrated there. for many reasons, rebellion against western hegemony or resource capitalism took the form of revolutionary marxism in many other areas of the world. you'd have to look more specifically at the local histories for that, such as why the clerical institutions of the ME were well-developed and robust where in places like peru they were not.

and, again, the fact that we are already discussing material and historical factors relevant to the region shows that the problem is not 'islam'. how can you generalize about 1.8 billion people and echo macron's comments, as if the history of wahhabism in saudi arabia is some universal condition for the religion?

Last edited by uziq (2020-11-14 03:40:37)

i'm a little confused how a discussion of 'is islam the problem?' has segued into you, yet again, making interventionist arguments about muslim countries. on the one hand you're incredibly specific and strategic, and on the other you make pronouncements about all muslims living in the west, about the religion 'having a problem'.

good luck forcing regime change in turkey and saudi arabia though! the rich successes of the last 20 years have worn well on you. it would probably help if we stopped supporting the clerics under the table, wouldn't it?

i find it seriously hard to talk about what A Problem saudi arabia is when we let the saudi airforce train in UK airspace and sell the regime billions of pounds worth of arms and war-making technology. we are at least complicit in the widespread war crimes taking place in yemen. and yet we also enjoy this sport of pouting our lips and talking about what a serious issue wahhabi islam is, etc. the regime is strong because of us, not despite of our affronted western values.

Last edited by uziq (2020-11-14 03:45:40)

but saudi arabia is a major western ally and exists, and is strong, because of western arms and oil deals. we might wag our finger when MBS murders a journalist, but he's still our pet. again, they're not treated like north korea. and the reason for that isn't because 'it would only further retrench them'. they're not treated like north korea because they're incredibly valuable, and profitable, allies. saudi arabia's medieval interpretation of islam is flourishing because we tacitly support it in all the ways that matter.

iran exists in its present form because of the histories of (a) colonialism, (b) oil companies in the region and (c) contemporary geopolitics with its neighbouring sunni muslim and israeli neighbours. again, the west is hugely complicit in this state of affairs and bears a fair share of responsibility.

and yet you claim an ENTIRE RELIGION is in crisis. don't act surprised when an erdogan can turn your boiler-plate liberal protestations to his own political advantage. it's a massive fucking own goal on the west's part.

Re; weapons deals. You're not the only one who regrets that eurofighters were sold to the saudi airforce. Or any other military tech for that matter.

yeah well, you're full of this talk. 'poland and hungary becoming fascist is regrettable, but nonetheless i will continue to prosecute and beat up on turks because of the exact same fascistic tendencies'. 'it's regrettable that we are supporting a reactionary regime in saudi arabia, but nonetheless i will insult 1.8 billion people on this planet by accusing their faith of having major problems'.

Last edited by uziq (2020-11-14 03:50:06)

uziq wrote:

you want to ignore all the parts of the world where islamic civilisation has joined the west.

I'm really feeling they have though.

you want to ignore all the parts of the world where christians want to keep women as second class citizens or property. it’s incredibly selective and disingenuous.

What about where the jews make their women shave their heads?

I'm sure they do it because they want to, just as Afghans grow beards.

I mean, you can't physically force someone to grow a beard right??

Yes I'm sure muslim women choose their life.

So the vast sum of Muslim women are just happy living in their extremely oppressive societies but Muslims who "escaped" to the west are just fine living like us? If things are so great for Muslim women then why do the westernized Muslim women you point to as examples of integration even exist? Why aren't they all replicating their gender norms wherever they go if given the chance?