Archbishop of Canterbury suggests Islamic Law in the UK...

[El Tejon]

Wait, wait, wait!  There's someone with only 5 guns on this board?  I keep that many in my Audi.

WTF, Sgt. Bob, get on the stick, old boy and buy some bleedin' guns.  5 Guns?  My 9 year old nephew owns twice that.  Geez, you guys.

O.K., now, back to all the whining about the Archbishop.  So, if this is all done purusant to contract, like choice of law provisions in American contracts (e.g., "the law of New York state shall apply to any dispute of this contract"), what's the big deal?

Achmed's grocery store contracts with Yassam's House of Veggies and then there is a dispute about price or overhead or whatever.  Instead of running into civil court, they both hop down to the mosque and talk to the guy with the beard.

What's wrong with Alternative Dispute Resolution?  I thought everyone here hated lawyers?

[HankB]

For example, the Iranian constitution states that "the investigation of individuals beliefs is forbidden" and that "no one may be molested or taken to task simply for holding a certain belief" . . . but try to open a church or synagogue in Tehran, or simply practice the Baha'i faith, and you'll soon be smacked hard by reality . . . and not just by a teeny, tiny, number of the faithful.

And not just in this one Moslem country.

This looks like a " . . . camel's nose under the tent flap . . ." type of issue.

Uh, hate to burst the stereotype bubble, but not only are there synagogues in Tehran....Ahmadinejad is a top donor to the Tehran Jewish Hospital.  Bahai religion is illegal though, that's true.  Just not Judaism-In Iran Jews are considered Iranians, just like everyone else in that country.

In 1948, there were estimated to be 100,000 Jews in Iran; estimates are that today, there are less than 1/4 that number.

Hmmm . . . I wonder why . . .

Maybe because in Iran, Jews may not occupy senior positions in the government or the military, are prevented from serving in the judiciary and security services and cannot become public school heads. They're not considered to be just Iranians ". . . like everyone else in that country."

Ahmadinejad's supposed donations are about as real as John Kerry's hunting heritage.

[De Selby]

Big deal-there are yearly demonstrations in tel aviv with signs that say "burn all the gays and blacks" held by Orthodox extremists.

BULLSH__.

See for yourself:

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/784453.html

Hundreds of police forces deployed in residential areas of Jerusalem on Monday as demonstrations against the upcoming gay pride parade erupted in the city's religious neighborhoods for a second week.

A taxi driver was lightly injured when his cab struck a trash receptacle rolled into the streets by ultra-Orthodox protesters. Police took over residential streets to force demonstrators to clear the roads and cease disturbances. Over the course of the evening, protests spilled over from the city's ultra-Orthodox streets into more mixed areas.

[De Selby]

That's one of the things I find so odd about the Islam bashing campaign afoot-it's so similar to the religions of every western european country (including Judaism) that you'd think people would take a step back and look at other explanations for terrorism and violence, but apparently this isn't commonly done. 

No, it's not similar.  Yes, you can find points of similarity.  But these religions are all very different.  Why do we pretend otherwise?

Okay, so my question is: In what way are they so strikingly different?

I am not pretending. It is a sincere question.

Of course, "similar" is a rather subjective term.  For the sake of this discussion, the similarities may be important.  It's just that there is a widespread, and tiresome, insistence that all religions are really the same.  Which has a certain truth, if we decide that the differences are not important.  But that would be like saying that all schools of philosophy or all political ideologies are the same. 

So, OK, proceed. 

That's true-of course they are not the same.  But for the purposes of this discussion, ie, their rules on family law and social conduct, how are they different?

Theologically they all have differences.  But in terms of what they teach as far as behavior, and how their legal systems work, just what is the difference?

That's a better way to frame the question.

[Tecumseh]

Let's see, Tecumseh,

Phelps's people are ONE SMALL GROUP.

There were mobs calling for death in London. In Sudan (teddy bear). In Pakistan. In Paris suburbs. In place after place after place, with either bloodthirsty signs or machetes or AK's firing in the air, or all three. Every day. Over and over and over and over, people by the thousands.

You're in college, aren't you? You don't understand yet, if so, so give it a rest.

  How many people?  You have offered nothing but anecdotal evidence that all Muslims hate the USA and everything not Islamic.  I have posted proof that as irrefutable as the proof you have posted about Muslims.  Yet mine is dismissed because of what exactly? 

What does it matter if I am in college or not?  Do you think that is all I do?  Why don't I get it?  Please elaborate for me.

[De Selby]

In 1948, there were estimated to be 100,000 Jews in Iran; estimates are that today, there are less than 1/4 that number.

Hmmm . . . I wonder why . . .

There's no secret there-because the economies in America and Israel are vastly better, and Iranian Jews have a much easier time emigrating to those places than other Iranians.  Hence, they leave Iran (wisely) at a much higher rate than other segments of the population.  If Israel and the US opened doors to every Iranian, we'd have a flood of them regardless of religion for the obvious economic sense of the decision.

Maybe because in Iran, Jews may not occupy senior positions in the government or the military, are prevented from serving in the judiciary and security services and cannot become public school heads. They're not considered to be just Iranians ". . . like everyone else in that country."

Ahmadinejad's supposed donations are about as real as John Kerry's hunting heritage.

What? Jews are guaranteed a certain number of seats in the parliament, run the best hospital in Tehran, and are honored yearly by Ahmadinejad's party for their sacrifices and contributions to Iran during the Iran-Iraq war.  This picture of Jews in Iran is simply false-they are oppressed in that they are Iranians (because Iran is not a free country, period), but there is no institutionalized pogram there. 

http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0427/p01s03-wome.html?page=3

Part of that coexistence has been gratitude for the Dr. Sapir Hospital, a Jewish charity hospital that would have closed years ago, but for subsidies from Jews inside and outside Iran, doctors say.

During the 1979 revolution, the hospital refused to hand over those wounded in clashes with the security forces of the pro-West Shah Reza Pahlavi. Ayatollah Khomeini later sent a personal representative to express his thanks. Ahmadinejad, too, has made a $27,000 donation.

[Bigjake]

Nuke this thread, it's the only way to be sure...

[Manedwolf]

Wow, check the British media.

This seems to have lit a fuse under the public there, woke at least some out of their statist stupor and made them yell "No sharia, please, we're British." People are really ANGRY.

Calls for the guy's resignation, even, from all quarters.

Good.

[Iain]

Good that people are either wilfully misunderstanding as you are, or are easily duped by media misrepresentation? (which you would recognise if the words 'sharia' and 'muslim' were not involved.)

Here's an unscientific survey of the top'recommended' responses of the BBC 'Have Your Say' debate, which has attracted over 20,000 responses. I'll classify them into two simple categories 1) 'probably doesn't know their arse from their elbow and is talking bulls**t', and 2) 'maybe, just maybe isn't a reactionary idiot and has looked into this'

1) 30 responses
2) 0 responses

Like I say, if this wasn't about sharia, if the Archbishop had said something about incorporating Jewish arbitration courts (as already exist) and people had posted responses on that HYS such as 'over my dead body' (there is one there in the top 30) then you'd recognise this for what it is. Right now you'd be labelling the entire British population as anti-semites, and I'd sadly have to agree, if this storm was about Jews and Jewish law, there would be proof of there being a lot of anti-semites. But it isn't, so many are blind to what this actually is.

For a change I agree with jake. Nuke this thread, it's a cesspool, much like the media response has been.

[Manedwolf]

Good that people are either wilfully misunderstanding as you are, or are easily duped by media misrepresentation? (which you would recognise if the words 'sharia' and 'muslim' were not involved.)

For a change I agree with jake. Nuke this thread, it's a cesspool, much like the media response has been.

Okay, it didn't wake them all up. My mistake.

"Ostrich" is a unique perspective.

[Iain]

You would irritate me, if I thought you weren't intelligent enough to understand what the Archbishop said. But you are intelligent enough to understand this issue, you don't want to.

That's sad. You are little more than an islamophobe reacting furiously and deliberately to a straw man and delighting in the islamophobia that the media misrepresentation has whipped up.

Seems your perspective isn't unique sadly.

[Manedwolf]

"Islamophobe".

Hm.

Underground. Boom.
Double-decker bus. Boom.
Glasgow airport. Boom.
Two nightclubs. Almost boom.

How loud do the explosions have to be before you realize that you've got a growing population of militant sorts who don't want to become British, they want to remake the UK into an extension of their extremist caliphate, and that includes wanting a parallel system of justice based on 12th century barbaric practices and zero respect for women?

This is not like the IRA troubles. Negotiation is seen as weakness. Concessions are seen as an opening for more demands. It will get worse.

And worse.

And worse.

Until London looks like the Middle East, complete with weekly suicide bombings. If you let it.

[Iain]

What - for me to fear my volunteer who works with disabled people of all races and ages and who is a leading member of his local mosque and has run his own successful businesses since he was 18? His brothers who run the local takeaway? His wife, his children and his parents? The vast majority of British muslims who are much closer to him than they are to your fantasy?

A lot more than your fear mongering. There are problems, but your fantasy and the fantasies of those like you certainly aren't helping. I'll do my bit for muslim relations in the UK by continuing to work with this guy and his community, that'll achieve far more than paranoid hateful rantings on the internet ever could.

that includes wanting a parallel system of justice based on 12th century barbaric practices and zero respect for women?

You didn't listen to any of the lawyers on this thread, nor to any of those who have read what has been discussed. Not because you can't, but because you don't want to.

Try your schtick with something else, another day. I won't forget, others might.

[seeker_two]

This picture is so ironic on a deep level to those who've watched Napoleon Dynamite.......

He does realize that, under Sharia law,he's a dead man. Right?......

  You have no understanding of Sharia law, do you?

Enough to know that preaching another religion in Sharia-ruled Islamic nations tends to get one even odds in the Dead Pool.......

Wait, wait, wait!  There's someone with only 5 guns on this board?  I keep that many in my Audi.

Thanks for making me feel inadequate on so many levels....... 

[Tecumseh]

This picture is so ironic on a deep level to those who've watched Napoleon Dynamite.......

He does realize that, under Sharia law,he's a dead man. Right?......

  You have no understanding of Sharia law, do you?

Enough to know that preaching another religion in Sharia-ruled Islamic nations tends to get one even odds in the Dead Pool.......

Where is this located in the Koran?  Please show me.  I am sure you have a legitimate source. 

[Manedwolf]

What Rowan Williams wishes upon us is an abomination and I write here as a modern Muslim woman. He lectures the nation on the benefits of sharia law  made by bearded men, for men  and wants the alternative legal system to be accommodated within our democracy in the spirit of inclusion and cohesion.

Pray tell me sir, how do separate and impenetrable courts and schools and extreme female segregation promote commonalities and deep bonds between citizens of these small isles?

What he did on Thursday was to convince other Britons, white, black and brown, that Muslims want not equality but exceptionalism and their own domains. Enlightened British Muslims quail. Friends like this churchman do us more harm than our many enemies. He passes round what he believes to be the benign libation of tolerance. It is laced with arsenic.

He would not want his own girls and women, I am sure, to "choose" to be governed by these laws he breezily endorses. And he is naive to the point of folly if he imagines it is possible to pick and choose the bits that are relatively nice to the girls or ones that seem to dictate honourable financial transactions.

Look around the Islamic world where sharia rules and, in every single country, these ordinances reduce our human value to less than half that is accorded a male; homosexuals are imprisoned or killed, children have no free voice or autonomy, authoritarianism rules and infantilises populations.

What's more, different Muslim nations claim to have their own allegedly god-given sharia. In Saudi Arabia, women cannot drive (What in Allah's name could the Koran have warned about cars?). In Bangladesh and Pakistan, they have no such bar to driving, although increasingly Saudi Wahabi Islam is taking over and we see Saudi sharia taking hold.

It is growing in influence here, too. Ten years ago, the only fully shrouded Muslim women around were from the Arab fiefdoms, the many wives of sheikhs often drawn by cartoonists to convey the absurdity and inhumanity of such cloaks. Now all of Europe has these girls and women rendering themselves invisible in public spaces. It is their elected sharia, so they claim without credibility. There is no agreed body of sharia, it is all drafted by males and the most cruel is now claiming absolute authority.

In Pakistan, on the statutes are strictures on adultery introduced by the military dictator Zia ul-Haq. Women activists in that country have given their lives protesting against the injustice of those laws where women suspected of adultery, or rape victims, are punished in hideous ways and the man goes free.

The Iranian theocracy changes its regulations from year to year, capriciously playing with the lives of females. The morality police hound women and girls, beat them up, imprison them for showing an ankle, walking too provocatively or singing in the streets. They fight back but are ground down eventually.

Two Iranian friends chose to die rather than live under the demeaning religious orders. Go to Afghanistan if you fancy a 12-year-old bride  a practice approved by the mullahs. That's sharia for you. Many women, gay men and dissidents came to Britain to escape Islamic tyrants and their laws. Dr Williams supports those laws and, by default, makes the refugees victims again.

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/yasmin-alibhai-brown/yasmin-alibhaibrown-what-he-wishes-on-us-is-an-abomination-780186.html

[Bigjake]

With blatant fact like what Manedwolf just posted, how is it that you two live in a parallel world where Sharia is a happy fuzzy form of theocracy, and Iran is more tolerant and understanding than Berkeley?

[De Selby]

This is not like the IRA troubles. Negotiation is seen as weakness. Concessions are seen as an opening for more demands. It will get worse.

And worse.

And worse.

Until London looks like the Middle East, complete with weekly suicide bombings. If you let it.

You know what?

This could be a quote from Goebbels' speech to the German people on "total war" against the Bolshevist threat.  It's scary how similar some of the arguments people today use to whip up fear of the "islamic threat" are to the very same arguments Goebbels used to whip up support for "total war against the East!"

From Goebbels:

That is a direct threat to the existence of every European power. No one should believe that Bolshevism would stop at the borders of the Reich, were it to be victorious. The goal of its aggressive policies and wars is the Bolshevization of every land and people in the world. In the face of such undeniable intentions, we are not impressed by paper declarations from the Kremlin or guarantees from London or Washington. We know that we are dealing in the East with an infernal political devilishness that does not recognize the norms governing relations between people and nations.

The similarities are striking.

[Bigjake]

That is a direct threat to the existence of every European power. No one should believe that Bolshevism would stop at the borders of the Reich, were it to be victorious. The goal of its aggressive policies and wars is the Bolshevization of every land and people in the world. In the face of such undeniable intentions, we are not impressed by paper declarations from the Kremlin or guarantees from London or Washington. We know that we are dealing in the East with an infernal political devilishness that does not recognize the norms governing relations between people and nations.

Uh, hello?  He WAS RIGHT about the Soviets.  They DID threaten the whole world, not just Europe, up until about 1991...

[De Selby]

That is a direct threat to the existence of every European power. No one should believe that Bolshevism would stop at the borders of the Reich, were it to be victorious. The goal of its aggressive policies and wars is the Bolshevization of every land and people in the world. In the face of such undeniable intentions, we are not impressed by paper declarations from the Kremlin or guarantees from London or Washington. We know that we are dealing in the East with an infernal political devilishness that does not recognize the norms governing relations between people and nations.

Uh, hello?  He WAS RIGHT about the Soviets.  They DID threaten the whole world, not just Europe, up until about 1991...

He was talking about Jews, the "masterminds" of Bolshevism.  So no, he wasn't right.

[Tecumseh]

With blatant fact like what Manedwolf just posted, how is it that you two live in a parallel world where Sharia is a happy fuzzy form of theocracy, and Iran is more tolerant and understanding than Berkeley?

  And you have some actual proof from Islamic scholars that say all non-Muslims must be killed?  I do have a problem with mass media? I mean I have seen the media lambasted here and on other gun forums.  How is it they cannot understand the difference between a clip and a magazine but they can understand so easily what many scholars take lifetimes to earn?

[Manedwolf]

So a Muslim woman says what a bad idea this is, how people went to the UK to ESCAPE this in the sandbox, and you disbelieve it.

Right. Denial is a fascinating thing...

[De Selby]

So a Muslim woman says what a bad idea this is, how people went to the UK to ESCAPE this in the sandbox, and you disbelieve it.

Right. Denial is a fascinating thing...

Well if a Muslim woman in a UK paper said it, who could possibly dispute the fact?

Seriously, do you believe that this amounts to evidence in support of your claims?  Or is the anecdotal random person's viewpoint just a rhetorical device that you use to get people on board with your views about Islam?

[Manedwolf]

Seriously, do you believe that this amounts to evidence in support of your claims?  Or is the anecdotal random person's viewpoint just a rhetorical device that you use to get people on board with your views about Islam?

Do you even realize how ironic it is that you asked that?

Hold up a mirror.

THAT IS YOU.

[De Selby]

Seriously, do you believe that this amounts to evidence in support of your claims?  Or is the anecdotal random person's viewpoint just a rhetorical device that you use to get people on board with your views about Islam?

Do you even realize how ironic it is that you asked that?

Hold up a mirror.

THAT IS YOU.

Referencing the huge number of condemnations of terrorism by Muslim organizations is not "anecdotal evidence."  Neither is pointing out that no Muslim authorities (scriptures, persons, anything of the kind) hold the extreme views that you regularly claim "Islam [is it a person?] wants to force on us!"

I notice that there was no answer to my question.