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Legitimate criticism of Islam

In my experience it's the racists who come out with shit like: 'You can't criticise Islam (or mass immigration) without being called a racist these days'.

The left should always have the courage of its convictions and not shy away from criticising when criticism is due.

Religious fundamentalism is basically right wing and conservative in nature, so the left shouldn't feel the need to hold back.

Thing is, much of what is held as (pardon the pun) "articles of faith" by fundamentalists, isn't much to do with religion, it's about control. This applies whether the fundamentalist is Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Jew or of any other organised religion.
Fundamentalist Muslims justify the burqa through references to the Koranic injunctions to modesty - those injunctions applied to 7-8th century Arabia, and were with regard to wearing suitable garments of the day: The equivalent of loose shalwar kameez and a veil-and-headcovering arrangement - for both genders. The burqa, on the other hand, has only ever been a form of garb used to both indirectly and directly oppress women within parts of Pashtun tribal society. It pre-existed Islam, and was all about marking and coveting property. Did I find this out for myself? No, I was told this by Pakistani Muslims who did me the great honour of taking me into their household.
 
Thing is, much of what is held as (pardon the pun) "articles of faith" by fundamentalists, isn't much to do with religion, it's about control. This applies whether the fundamentalist is Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Jew or of any other organised religion.
Fundamentalist Muslims justify the burqa through references to the Koranic injunctions to modesty - those injunctions applied to 7-8th century Arabia, and were with regard to wearing suitable garments of the day: The equivalent of loose shalwar kameez and a veil-and-headcovering arrangement - for both genders. The burqa, on the other hand, has only ever been a form of garb used to both indirectly and directly oppress women within parts of Pashtun tribal society. It pre-existed Islam, and was all about marking and coveting property. Did I find this out for myself? No, I was told this by Pakistani Muslims who did me the great honour of taking me into their household.

Spot on again. ..
 
I would say similar. No jail.

Ozzy Osbourne was arrested in the US for pissing on some monument. He was asked what he would think if Americans went and pissed on Buckingham Palace. He replied that he wouldn't give a shit.

He was arrested in Texas for pissing on the Alamo - possibly the single most defining monument to Texan machismo. To say "US" rather than "Texas" rather misses the specificity of the offence. :D
 
I am fine with them being jailed for a year.

I believe that in any case of religious offense, the meaning and the depth of the intended offence, and whether the offence is rectifiable, should be the main guides as to whether punishment should be custodial. With these idiots, I personally am of the opinion that 300 hours of community service sweeping the road and pavement outside of the mosque would be more fitting than bestowing the martyry involved in a custodial sentence on them.
 
ok. I'm not.

Joe Orton and Kenneth Halliwell were given two years for drawing cocks in library books in the 60s. I thought we'd moved on from that. But clearly we haven't.

TBF, that would only be analogous if they'd been slipping slices of prosciutto into books at Stamford Hill library with the deliberate intention of offending the local Haredim.
 
a clash of civilisation will see islam annihilated within hours. it lacks thought, education, technology and 1000 other thingys

Yet again, the idiot marks himself as an idiot.

In other news, thriller pissed on his own shoes while using a urinal this morning.
 
I'm somewhat surprised at the replies to that comment of mine. I know men in general will go to bat for their right to tell rape jokes, but I thought people here were more enlightened.

To get this thread back on topic: Islam is shit! Ban the burqa! Mohammed was a paedophile!

It's not about rape jokes, it's about precedent being set.
Make rape jokes punishable by prison, and what next? Jokes about corrupt coppers and/or politicians? See where I'm going?

If you're soapy enough to want a legal culture that incarcerates for humour, however offensive, then frankly you're an idiot.
 
It's not about rape jokes, it's about precedent being set.
Make rape jokes punishable by prison, and what next? Jokes about corrupt coppers and/or politicians? See where I'm going?

FWIW in the USA there's a lot of overlap between joking about rape and joking about law enforcement...
 
It's not about rape jokes, it's about precedent being set.
Make rape jokes punishable by prison, and what next? Jokes about corrupt coppers and/or politicians? See where I'm going?

If you're soapy enough to want a legal culture that incarcerates for humour, however offensive, then frankly you're an idiot.

Rape jokes are different because they actually encourage and empower rapists, there is research on this which I'm trying to find.
Ditto for racist jokes which encourage racist violence.
Police and politicians are far more often perpetrators of violence than victims, so are fair game.
 
Police culture is rotten and urgently needs reform. The police should have to study sociology, violent and bigoted cops dismissed instead of covered for.

Any student of sociology, even in their first year, becomes aware that the nature of a closed organisation such as the police makes it not only likely that wrongdoing will be covered up, but that covering up will be a sub rosa institutional practice.

But racist and rape jokes are a form of violence, towards human brains. It seems arbitrary to only prosecute things that affect other parts of the body.

Please try to be accurate. They're a form of verbal action against the mind (not the brain) that may be constituted as violence in some cases
. it doesn't help whatver point you're trying to make, if your accuracy is that of a drunken farmer with a rifle and some squirrels in his orchard.
 
Please try to be accurate. They're a form of verbal action against the mind (not the brain) that may be constituted as violence in some cases
. it doesn't help whatver point you're trying to make, if your accuracy is that of a drunken farmer with a rifle and some squirrels in his orchard.

I don't understand your point, unless you're arguing for mind-body dualism which I doubt. Would you prefer the description "psychological violence"?
 
Rape jokes are different because they actually encourage and empower rapists, there is research on this which I'm trying to find.

I'm not sure the research you're looking for (I think it's Kitzinger et al) says what you think it says, if it's the same paper on sexual offending I read last year. It's about how rapists justify after the event. In other words, it's about how they fish for excuses, and where they fish for them, and the reality is always the same - whatever excuses they come up with, the reasons for their crime are a contempt and/or hatred generated by their wider social contacts and context. In other words, look to patriarchy first, for the root causes, before leaping on "rape jokes" as a specific factor.
In a majority of the hundreds of case histories I read regarding sexual offenders, the most usual "incitement" cited isn't rape jokes, it's the hoary old "they were wearing clothes that showed they were asking for it/they gave me a look/they said no, but didn't mean it" trinity that get invoked about 70% of the time in adult against adult sex crimes, usually "mitigated" with "I couldn't help myself". Remove rape jokes from the agenda and you're still left with the plethora of everyday social factors under patriarchy that allow rape to happen and rapists to get away with it.
 
I don't understand your point, unless you're arguing for mind-body dualism which I doubt. Would you prefer the description "psychological violence"?

It's more accurate.
Violence against a brain leaves physical pathology. Violence against a mind leaves psychological pathology. The two are very different things.
 
Article 19.
  • Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers
Declaration of human rights....

No specific constitutional freedom of speech in the UK, though.
 
I'm not sure the research you're looking for (I think it's Kitzinger et al) says what you think it says, if it's the same paper on sexual offending I read last year. It's about how rapists justify after the event. In other words, it's about how they fish for excuses, and where they fish for them, and the reality is always the same - whatever excuses they come up with, the reasons for their crime are a contempt and/or hatred generated by their wider social contacts and context. In other words, look to patriarchy first, for the root causes, before leaping on "rape jokes" as a specific factor.

It's not that paper although it sounds interesting.

It's this: Exposure to Sexist Humor and Rape Proclivity: The Moderator Effect of Aversiveness Ratings
abstract said:
The aim of this study is to explore the effect of exposure to sexist humor about women on men’s self-reported rape proclivity. Earlier studies have shown that exposure to this type of humor increases rape proclivity and that funniness responses to jokes are a key element to consider. However, the role of aversiveness responses has not been studied. In a between-group design, 109 male university students are randomly exposed to sexist or nonsexist jokes. Participants are asked to rate the jokes according to their degree of funniness and aversiveness. Participants’ levels of hostile and benevolent sexism were also measured. Results about the relationship between sexist attitudes and sexist humor and the relationship between sexist attitudes and rape proclivity are consistent with those of earlier studies. However, exposure to sexist humor affects rape proclivity only when aversiveness shown to this type of humor is low. The results are discussed in the light of the prejudiced norm theory.

and another paper, which unfortunately I can't access at Social consequences of disparagement hu... [Pers Soc Psychol Rev. 2004] - PubMed - NCBI
astract said:
In this article we introduce a "prejudiced norm theory" that specifies the social-psychological processes by which exposure to disparagement humor uniquely affects tolerance of discrimination against members of groups targeted by the humor. Our theory posits that a norm of tolerance of discrimination implied by disparagement humor functions as a source of self-regulation for people high in prejudice. For people high in prejudice, this norm regulates the effect of exposure to disparagement humor on tolerance of subsequently encountered discriminatory events. Our theory contributes to the literature on prejudice and discrimination by delineating the processes by which disparagement humor creates a normative climate of tolerance of discrimination, as well as variables that accentuate and attenuate its effects.
 
What do you think praying for people is going to achieve exactly? I don't get it. I was raised a Catholic myself. I was even made an altar boy to try to curb my questioning of the priests about how nuts and full of shit the bible was.

You might as well believe that the Lord of the Rings is based on actual events.

Well, we know through research that the recipients of prayer, if they believe in "the power of prayer", tend to get a psychological boost from it, and sometimes that psychological boost can have short-term physical manifestations.
 
Thing is, much of what is held as (pardon the pun) "articles of faith" by fundamentalists, isn't much to do with religion, it's about control.
Exactly.
Control is what it's all about and, I suspect, is the main reason such superstitions persist.
 

So the second paper reflects pretty much what I said - that people who are prone to such actions are prone to using excuses for their behaviour, and the first paper...well, the having just downloaded the paper (not just the abstract) and perusing the actual experiment, I'm not convinced that the sample (109) is sufficiently-large enough* for the conclusions they draw. That they don't detail what they term "the Spanish version of the ASI" (Ambivalent Sexism Inventory) also makes it hard to know just how well they've been able to allow for specifically-cultural sexism.


* I have a bit of a bugbear about sample sizes. I don't believe that one can do more than gauge sexism at that particular university, with a smaple of that size. Although funding would never allow it, I'd want to test at, at least, 9 other unis in the region with similar student demography, to see whether my results were transferable toward a general principle.
 
Does the UN declaration of human rights not still apply?

It's the EC one we've specifically incorporated into UK law, IIRC, and the principle of subsidiarity therefore holds sway. It's what allowed us to soap-dodge our obligations under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child for years with regard to incarcerating refugee children.
 
Then there's criticism from within Islam itself:

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