Just to make sure I'm being 100% fair here, this post is well documented. You can follow the links or read the citation in the footnotes at the end to save yourself time. Where possible, international and academic organizations are cited. Where not possible, links came directly from sites written by Muslims for Muslims.

You're softening my argument a tad too much.

To begin, let's be perfectly clear: the Koran condemns rape as immoral. Muslim societies of all flavors condemn rape as immoral, with the exception of condemned female prisoners, who are expected to be raped in a handful of countries under Shar'ia for fear that they might make it to heaven (novelty and orthodoxy!) I'm even willing to let that go for the purposes of this argument, though, because that's not talking about women walking down the street.

Here's where it turns hairy: Islam teaches that sexual attraction is 100% on the women. Women are expected to take responsibility for men's sexual behavior. As a direct result of this, women who fail to prove they are raped may be found guilty of premarital sex, which is a crime for the woman involved (1). The prohibition extends to everyday life as well. The well-known examples are laws that require women to veil themselves. Violations of these laws often carry the same penalties as premarital sex--namely, torture. (In their forebearance and mercy in the name of Allah the Most Merciful, only adultery is punished with death) (2). Less well-known is the taboo against sex education, which is said to be misleading and a cause of promiscuity (3). All of this culminates in creating an entire society of men who are not taught to control their own sexuality and who are expected to deal with women with no social instruction (4).

Ok, for as much as I want to write more, this is going slowly, so this is all you get for today.


(1): Laws that govern rape cases have invited both domestic and international censure. Proving rape is mostly a woman’s responsibility. The Sharia laws introduced in 1979 require the presence of four witnesses to an act of rape or adultery before the crime can be established. This law obliterates the distinction between adultery and rape, criminalizing a private offense (adultery) while, in effect, making rape a private matter in which the burden of proof lies on the victim. Close to 50 percent of female prison inmates in Pakistan are charged under adultery for rapes they cannot prove.

(2): Iranian penal law:
Article 82.

The penalty for adultery in the following cases shall be death, regardless of the age or marital status of the culprit: (1) Adultery with one’s consanguineous relatives (close blood relatives forbidden to each other by religious law); (2) Adultery with one’s stepmother in which the adulterer’s punishment shall be death; (3) Adultery between a non-Muslim man and a Muslim woman, in which case the adulterer (non-Muslim man) shall receive the death penalty; (4) Forcible rape, in which case the rapist shall receive the death penalty.

Article 83.

Adultery in the following cases shall be punishable by stoning: (1) Adultery by a married man who is wedded to a permanent wife with whom he has had intercourse and may have intercourse when he so desires; (2) Adultery of a married woman with an adult man provided the woman is permanently married and has had intercourse with her husband and is able to do so again.

Note. Adultery of a married woman with a minor is punishable by flogging.

Article 84.

Old married adulterers and adulteresses shall be flogged before being stoned.

Article 88.

The punishment for an unmarried adulterer or adulteress shall be one hundred lashes.

Article 638.

Anyone who explicitly violates any religious taboo in public beside being punished for the act
should also be imprisoned from ten days to two months, or should be flogged (74 lashes).

(3): Not available online. Reference Ali's book The Caged Virgin.

(4): In fiqh, “shubah” refers to “a mistake that leads a man to have intercourse with a woman unlawful to him.” There are “mistakes of contract” = shubhat aqd and “mistakes of act” = shubhat fil. It is written that Abu Hanifah extended the meaning of the latter to include situations such as when “a man hires a woman for some work and then fornicates with her... the two will not be penalized for fornication because of his ignorance that his hiring does not include this act.”

On a more serious note, the most disgusting part of this entire issue is the assumption beneath it. Muslims jurists claim that men can’t help it; it is their nature. It is their nature to be sexual predators. Acting upon that ridiculous assumption, the jurists can claim that out of love for women and in the desire to protect them from Y-chromosome predators women should stay in the home away from those dangerous men who might attack her.

This argument is just another form of naturalistic fallacy—arguing that “what is” is “what ought to be.” Because some men sexually prowl does not mean this is what they ought to do, nor does it demonstrate that such is man’s nature. Operating out of this false assumption, male jurists limit the freedom of Muslim women because the religion defines men in such a disgusting way that it fails to hold men responsible for their actions.

The structure of the argument is simple and erroneous. An unproved assumption is accepted as fact (men cannot control their sexuality; that is their nature). They then posit that society would be chaotic and dangerous if there were no safeguards for the sexually crazed males. Since there are only males and females in society, females must be isolated for their protection. Therefore, females must lose freedoms because of an unproved assumption. Moreover, although the deficiency is attributed to the males, females are called the weaker sex. In fact, it would seem that the poor women carrying the moral responsibility for the out of control males are in fact the stronger sex. But then again, the mind is an amazing thing. The same mind that attributes such a disgusting nature to males can in the next sentence hold that women are the weaker sex.

Thats a great twisting of language there. What does uncontrolled sexual urges have to do with being weaker or stronger.

On the other hand, everybody knows that in countries with dictatorships they have some pretty wacked out laws.

Show similar laws in Lebbanon and Turkey if you want to make a point about religion.

You want me to prove a point about Islam by showing similar laws in a country ran by Christians or a deliberately secular nation that goes out of its way to browbeat orthodox Muslims? Ok. I'll get right on that.

But your documentation doesn't prove your point. I can make the assertion that computer games are evil and hyperlink to many articles about people neglecting their families (or basic bodily functions) because of them, violent behavior with direct and tangential links to video games, my favorite tropical fish articles on the Discovery Channel website, etc. But it doesn't matter how many hyperlinks I have in my post if I'm not linking to material that proves the assertion that video games are evil.

Your initial assertion is that organized religion is evil, and thus far, I haven't seen much from you that proves this claim. You can't make the assertion and say, "See? Links to actual articles!" and expect that to be the end of the issue.



You then acknowledge that Islam condemns rape, but you point out that Iranian law requires the burden of proof to be on the victim such that the victim may actually end up being persecuted as an adulteress when they were actually raped. You point out that this equivocation also creates a psychological disparity in Iranian males that makes them more prone to view rape lightly.

Well, I would agree there are some real legal problems there. The U.S. laws concerning rape victims are no picnic, either, although they may be in a better state than turning a rape case into an adultery case (although we also have laws against adultery). But once again, this argument proves at most that Iran's legal system needs an overhaul in the area of rape. That still doesn't prove that Islam condones rape (in fact, you explicitly stated it does not), and therefore fails to prove that Islam is evil. Which would, then, also fail to prove that all organized religion is evil.

I don't disagree with many of the particulars you're bringing to critique. I just don't think those particulars prove your assertion, which is the reason for this thread. I could use a lot of similar evidence to "prove" that a lot of things were evil and caused social ills.

If I may ask you to speculate, what do you think the intrinsic property of religion that causes these kinds of attitudes in some people might be, Xavius?

I've always thought it may be something to do with making humanity the centre of an imaginary universe, and the ideal of perfection an isolated and very individual human state (both literally in godhood and conceptually in terms of sin). But I've certainly not given it as much thought as you obviously have, and I'd be fascinated to hear your thoughts.

I think that might be more helpful than the inevitably fruitless attempts to prove by example, too.

This is interesting.

So basically the root of evil is the belief that humans need to be as perfect as possible or are more important than anything else?

The way I read this is that the root of evil is the belief that humans need to be as perfect as possible with an individualized definition of perfection. Where religion is necessarily defined by humans (even if granted that one religion has a true deity, then the rest must mostly be fabricated) the ideal of perfection is also imperfect. I think that this is where Elryn is saying the evil lies.

One of the unique aspects of religion is that it offers a higher moral authority. This allows one to attribute moral rights to something higher than humans, thus giving them inalienability that rights granted by humans don't have. Even basic rights, like those in the American Declaration of Independence (life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness) are subject to change if the highest authority providing those rights are humans.

This is also the inherent danger of religion. By ascribing moral proscriptions to a being above human authority, one places one's actions and motivations outside human scrutiny.

Take for example Islam and Christianity. Since they are mutually exclusive, at least one of them must be man-made. Since radical Islam has some of the more obviously problematic examples we can assume that it is the one of human origins, but Christianity caused the Crusades and the Inquisition so it works as well.

Since blowing people up and raping women goes against almost all man-made ethical systems, these acts are only justifiable provided there is a moral authority higher than humanity. In the absence of divinity, they violate common morality and are thus considered evil.

I think you give people too much credit and overgeneralize about religion here.

The problem with religion is that people actually believe it, plain and simple. Like I said back on the first page, different religions produce different effects on societies, and the differences aren't trivial. There is no provision in Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, or Jainism that would lead a devout follower to blame a woman for being raped unless she was sitting naked on a park bench calling out to every guy that walks by (and even then, that's common sense talking, not their religions). The Koran and the Hadith have some very unsavory statements about women's sexuality and how men and women alike ought to respond to it. The problem isn't necessarily that these people are seeking perfection more than a devout Jainist. The problem is that they actually believe what's written.

The fact that the dominant religion correlates with specific social ills points to religion being a factor in their presence, especially when you can open the book and go "Oh, so that's why they think that." You really have to look at them all on a case by case basis. Christianity's sexual morality is only a little behind the times, so while it's not going to create strings of generations of men who don't know how to handle their own sexual urges, it does contribute to the African STD epidemics and suppression of science in the US. Hinduism actually has a surprisingly progressive sexual morality by modern standards, so while nothing in the Vedas is going to lead to higher incidence of rape or STDs, it does lead to a socially enforced system of poverty and sometimes suicidal fixation on honor.

I've said from the beginning that societal influences can blunt the effect of religion, especially in the West or the Orient, where polite society basically expects you not to take ancient religious texts seriously. As a result, India in the last several hundred years doesn't actually look all that much like a Hindu ideal, European Christians tend to have views more in line with their nations than their African brethren, and you can rest assured that Daganev is not going to stone you for witchcraft if he ever happens to run into you.

On the other hand, revolutions that involve a religious regime (either incoming or outgoing) can show how dramatic the difference is between religious influences. Iran is my favorite example, mostly because you went from the very progressive and egalitarian Persian society to the oppressive and misogynistic Islamic society in less than a decade. If you want the other end, Turkey banning political parties on account of their religious beliefs moderated the society fairly quickly (although I have to profess ignorance on the exact timescale).

On the other hand. The people of that culture already believed that, and the people who propagated the religion put into words what people were already thinking.





You can also be rest assured that if you were practicing Witchcraft in the year 20 B.C.E you also would not be stoned by some random person who walked into you. Nor would you even be stoned by the courts.




You obviously didn't read today's headlines. ...
http://news.google.com/news?source=ig&...vision&cd=1

That seems like an unsupported assertion, to me. How do you know they were already thinking that? To what extent does "already thinking that" have meaning in the times when these texts were written and culture and religion were essentially inseparable?

Well, the idea that people already had various cultural mores that were integrated into whatever religions they formed as "divine commandments" is as valid (not that I know about the actual evidence either way for certain) as the idea that they created a new set of morals they decided would be better and the cultures surrounding them latched on.

That runs a little contrary to history. Republican Iran didn't institute Shar'ia. Post-revolution Iran did. Why wouldn't they have just used the Republic to put laws into place supported by the general populace? On the contrary, the Iranian Revolution was preceeded by large-scale emigration, the Revolution itself was not the monarchy versus the theocrats, and Khomeini garnered public support through charisma more than logical debate. (For a more thorough handling and an eye-witness account of the Revolution from the eyes of a secularist, I suggest Reading Lolita in Tehran.)

You don't get credit for tolerance when your conquering empire makes it incredibly clear that you don't have the right to execute people and it will send the army back and crucify your people en masse if you try.



You're right! Those are today's headlines and not yesterday's headlines. Your powers of observation amaze me some days.

Anyways, Turkey is poised to elect a man who has vowed to protect secularism (and, granted, used to be an Islamist and is clearly still an orthodox Muslim) and the Turkish army, which has a recent history of ousting religious governments, has already made vague and ominous comments that it still highly values a secular government.

I'll bet you 100cr that they'll be fine.

Am I understanding correctly then in that you are not saying religion itself is necessarily a bad thing, but that many of the world's current religions are problems for reasons specific to the particulars of each?

Exactly. If the world's major religion was Jainism, we wouldn't be having this discussion.

Why not? Jainism believes women need at least one reincarnation, but not so for men, who can actually get it right the first time around. This kind of misogynistic inequality is bound to lead to rape. Their monks and nuns are also required to be celibate. No telling what kind of scandals we'd have if the world were full of Jainist monasteries.

Sure, you could point out how Jainist beliefs forbid rape or sex outside of marriage or violence of any kind, but we all know what a religion actually teaches is irrelevant as long as we can make some kind of causal chain to show that a religion contains elements that could explain social ills.

There is no reason why Jainism escapes your "critique."

You obviously didn't read your own article... There are protests against a conservative Muslim president in Turkey.

I think Xavius' point is that Jainism would lead to a different set of social ills, and thus we wouldn't be having this discussion.

Then again, I don't agree with his assertion that we don't have other things to fill the spiritual needs of people - Research has found that, in the US, most people who don't go to church read more books than people who do. I don't think that's a coincidence. It's perfectly possible to find the same sort of experience in science and art, and the social component can be filled by having a life, or just going to a friendly social setting (Say, a pub. Yes, I'm suggesting you all stop going to church on Sundays and instead go to a pub at 8 AM.)

Let me see, my sister is Muslim let me ask her...

Rape is indeed condemned.

Rape is explicitly forbidden. Why is it when people "quote" the Qur'an they always quote things that don't exist? "Inifdel" does not exist in the Qur'an, that is a latin word. O.o How funny... I have SEVEN Qur'ans in front of me, and the word 'rape' isn't in any of them... Not in the Index anyway. All things pertaining to women are found in the 4th Surah, Al Nisaa ('The Women').

Keep in mind, that the Qur'an is one thing that rules a Muslim's life, the other is th Hadiths, (Sayings of the Prophet, and his actions in life, as well as those of other Prophets, like Jesus, or Abraham.)

Several Hadiths state that Rape is strictly forbidden and those who do so are of the transgressors, those who will burn for their crimes.

Treatment of women begins on Ayah (verse) 15 of Surah (chapter) 4. On the subject of forced sexual activity we find.

4:19; "O you who believe, it is not lawful for you to take woman against their will.(554)..."

Anal sex, sex when she is uncomfortable, sex while she is on menses, and any sex that causes a woman pain (emotional or physical) is forbidden, and time must be served out in the hellfire until one is purified of such a horrible sin. So say'ith the Qur'an.

Oh and, just because a society is "Muslim" does not mean their CULTURE is. "Shari'a" is a rule of law, that has been corrupted by people's CULTURE. Let me remind you that "CULTURE" and "FAITH" are completely different, perfect example.

I'm Thai, in Thailand, we kill people who try to cross the border from Burma. Children, Women, Men, it doesn't matter. If you cross the center of the river, we snipe you from a tower. No questions asked. Thailand is officially a Buddhist nation. The king himself, must have spent time as a monk in his life, for his rule to be sanctified by parliament. Buddhists aren't supposed to kill, but we have the death penalty for 7 different crimes, and apply it very liberally.


Talk to American Muslims about Rape. If you want to talk numbers, let's talk numbers. There are more Muslims in Asia than in all of the middle east combined. The "stereotypical Muslim" against, based on numbers alone, is a SE Asian with a rice farmers get-up on.

The middle east makes up something like 15% of the 'Muslim World' according to the numbers in the CIA WorldFact Book.

Doesn't the king try to speak out against these injustices, assuming he has taken on the buddhist tradition of respect for life and pacifism?

But if religion were the cause of these social ills, then we might easily expect secular/atheist states to be the most utopic political experiments in existence. However, history has shown us this is not the case.

States that have been self-conscious in their promotion of secularism and provision of secular alternatives to religion are states like North Korea, Communist China, Stalinist Russia, Cuba, etc. In fact, most of these states have openly prohibited religion largely on the basis of arguments similar to the ones that Xavius has offered. If you believe, however, that Cuba became a humanistic paradise as a result of being freed from religious influences, well....

What these states share in common with themselves and, say, Iran, is totalitarianism, and if the primary argument in this thread is that totalitarianism is evil, well, you might not be able to prove that, either, but I think the data and the connections would certainly be much stronger than, say, blaming Africa's AIDS epidemic on the existence of Christianity.

I have a feeling that even Xavius is aware that the position presented in this thread is untenable. It began by stating that organized religion was evil, then shifted into religion causing social ills (which is still sort of lingering thread in the argument), then shifted into religion having undue influence in the government can create problems. Xavius is a good speaker, and many people share his anti-religious sentiments to some degree or another and agree with him from the get-go, and these factors obscure the fact that his argument still is not cogent.

You cannot pass judgment on Concept/Thing X just because Person Y/Government Y uses it as a justification for misanthropic behavior. It does not follow logically, and it does not follow empirically. Hopefully, anyone who takes a minute and catches their breath can see the absurdity of where this way of thinking would take them if they applied it consistently to everything to which it could be applied, especially if we didn't single out religion as the whipping boy.

Now, what you could easily support is the proposition that religion is not a factor in whether or not a society is moral. There are plenty of historical counterexamples (including from the Old Testament, itself) and statistics that strongly suggest that ostensibly religious societies are not particularly more free of, say, violent crime, than societies that are ostensibly secular. I would certainly be willing to own up to this, and I'd have a tremendously difficult time arguing otherwise. If anyone is interested in the arguments for this case, I'd be happy to share them.

Unfortunately, this is a death blow to the argument being advanced, because it suggests that religion or the lack thereof in a region is simply not a deciding factor as to how much crime they experience.



It's almost as if you're saying that being truer to his religion would -cure- social ills. I'm curious to hear how that jives with the overall argument that religion is the cause of them.