BS: Islamic Teachings

Subject: BS: Islamic Teachings
From: GUEST
Date: 23 Oct 06 - 05:46 AM

Not long after I picked up the free Saudi book, Mahmoud Shalash, an imam from Lexington, Ky., stood at the pulpit of my mosque and offered marital advice to the 100 or so men sitting before him. He repeated the three-step plan, with "beat them" as his final suggestion. Upstairs, in the women's balcony, sat a Muslim friend who had recently left her husband, who she said had abused her; her spouse sat among the men in the main hall.

At the sermon's end, I approached Shalash. "This is America," I protested. "How can you tell men to beat their wives?"

"They should beat them lightly," he explained. "It's in the Koran."

He was doing the dance.

Born into a conservative Muslim family that emigrated from Hyderabad, India, to West Virginia, I have seen many female relatives in India cloak themselves head to toe in black burqas and abandon their education and careers for marriage. But the Islam I knew was a gentle one. I was never taught that a man could -- or should -- physically discipline his wife. Abusing anyone, I was told, violated Islamic tenets against zulm , or cruelty. My family adhered to the ninth chapter of the Koran, which says that men and women "are friends and protectors of one another."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/20/AR2006102001261.html

Subject: RE: BS: Islamic Teachings
From: GUEST
Date: 23 Oct 06 - 05:52 AM

from above:

"Although Islamic historians agree that the prophet Muhammad never hit a woman, it is also clear that Muslim communities face a domestic violence problem. A 2003 study of 216 Pakistani women found that 97 percent had experienced such abuse; almost half of them reported being victims of nonconsensual sex. Earlier this year, the state-run General Union of Syrian Women released a report showing that one in four married Syrian women is the victim of domestic violence."

BUT of course Americans are exempt from the problem (sarcasm)...

"Last October, I listened to an online audio sermon by an American Muslim preacher, Sheik Yusuf Estes, who was scheduled to speak at West Virginia University as a guest of the Muslim Student Association. He soon moved to the subject of disobedient wives, and his recommendations mirrored the literal reading of 4:34. First, "tell them." Second, "leave the bed." Finally: "Roll up a newspaper and give her a crack. Or take a yardstick, something like this, and you can hit."

When I telephoned Estes later to ask about the sermon, he said that he had been trying to limit how and when men could hit their wives. He realized that he had to revisit the issue, he told me, when some Canadian Muslim men asked him if they could use the Sunday newspaper to give their wives "a crack."

Yet even those doing the 4:34 dance seem to realize that there's a problem. When I went back to listen to the audio clip later, the offensive language had been removed. And when I asked Estes if he had ever rolled up a newspaper to give his own wife a crack, he responded without hesitation.

"I'm married to a woman from Texas," he said. "Do you know what she would do to me?""

Subject: RE: BS: Islamic Teachings
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 23 Oct 06 - 08:06 AM

Translations can be the devil in these matters.

A quote from that article "By the 1970s, Saudi Arabia, with its ultra-traditionalist Wahhabi ideology, was providing the translations."

The same kind of thing happens with some of the transaltions of the Bible used and promoted by some Christian fundasmentalists. As is also the case with the other distorting trick of detaching a quotation from its context.

Subject: RE: BS: Islamic Teachings
From: Greg F.
Date: 23 Oct 06 - 09:46 AM

There ya go. Wackoes is wackoes, whatever the religious affiliation.

Subject: RE: BS: Islamic Teachings
From: greg stephens
Date: 23 Oct 06 - 02:06 PM

And GUESTS are GUESTS

Subject: RE: BS: Islamic Teachings
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 23 Oct 06 - 02:15 PM

But the actual article linked to is worth looking at. (More so than you'd think, from the nameless one's selected quotes.)

Subject: RE: BS: Islamic Teachings
From: greg stephens
Date: 23 Oct 06 - 06:12 PM

I'll have a look. Always a bit suspicious of provocative thread-opening by nameless people, though.

Subject: RE: BS: Islamic Teachings
From: autolycus
Date: 23 Oct 06 - 06:21 PM

"Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious convictions."

    Blaise Pascal, Pensees


   Islam "If shit happens,it's the will of Allah."

   Protestantism "Let shit happen to someone else."

   Capitalism   "Whoever has the most shit when they die,WINS."

   Darwinism   "Survival of the shittiest."

(And c.60 more, touching most bases.)