Secular democracy is a Sin
Some ideas are dangerous any way you look at them. This is one.
Over the past decade, thousands of people, from top politicians to ordinary voters, have been murdered by Islamists in Muslim countries that have held reasonably free elections (Morocco, Algeria, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, Turkey, Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Indonesia). Islamist opposition to democracy is based on the claim that allowing men to legislate would be a form of sherk, that is to say associating Man with God, who is the “sole and ultimate legislator”. Man-made law cannot rival God-made Shariah.
Humans can’t and mustn’t (especially mustn’t, because in fact of course they can, so they have to be stopped) correct or review or displace or act for or contradict or just plain ignore ‘God’; God always trumps humans, humans have to do what God says, never the other way around; yet (here’s where things get scary) ‘God’ of course is not around, not available for consultation or plea, not at the bench to commute sentences or pardon mistakes or hear about extenuating circumstances. All that’s around is a very very old and tedious book, and various interpretations of and commentaries on that book, along with a great many self-appointed interpreters of that book, who are pleased to kill you if you don’t do what they say, armed with the self-righteous claim that they are killing you in the name of this absent ‘God.’ You could hardly come up with a better recipe for that miserable combination of bullshit with tyranny which torments so much of the world. The sole and ultimate legislator is some sky-dweller whom no one ever sees or talks to, so all six-plus billion of us down here on this lumpy little planet are helpless to say anything about our laws or leaders or lives (unless we’re mullahs, of course). Heads they win tails we lose.
If I have broken God’s law, then let God arrest, try, convict, and sentence me.
I tuned in late to a disconcerting BBC Radio 5 morning phone-in programme a couple of days ago to hear both the guest in the studio (all I caught of his name was Chaudary or Choudary) and a couple of vociferous respondents emphasizing the item Ophelia highlights, that true Muslims cannot possibly be in favour of democracy as only Allah can legislate on the law. I only hope that such views are representative of a small minority of Muslims in the UK. In response to the recent poll showing that around 35% of young British Muslims would prefer to live under Sharia law than British law, some Muslims have argued that this doesn’t necessarily mean full-scale Sharia, but the poll indicates otherwise:
http://www.policyexchange.org.uk/images/libimages/246.pdf
Press reports have tended to pick out the 16-24 year olds views as being of concern, but there is little difference between these and the views of 25-34 year olds.
Around 35% 16-34 year olds would prefer to live under Sharia law than British law. (Around 50% prefer British law.)
Around 43% 16-34 year olds thought Sharia law was absolute and should not be interpreted to fit modern ideas.
Around 36% 16-34 year olds agree Muslim conversion should be punishable by death
Nearly 70% 16-34 year olds think that homosexuality should be illegal
The results of this poll (conducted by Populus) are generally in line with a similar one by ICM in 2006:
http://www.ukpollingreport.co.uk/blog/archives/146
The writer of the above webpage reports that if anything, women were marginally more in favour of Sharia than men:
>Exactly 50% of respondents were women, and they were actually more supportive of sharia law than male respondents. 41% were in favour, 38% opposed. Amongst male respondents the split was 39% to 45%.<
Wow.
There was also a chilling thing on the BBC’s ‘Have your say’ on the Bhutto assassination. Someone else quoted it, I didn’t see the original comment (and don’t know if ‘Have your say’ can be searched), but it was to the effect that Islam forbids women to take a public role therefore Bhutto was an apostate therefore killing her was okie doke.
That’s chilling because it sounds crazy but it’s not really a fringey view. For instance – from my review of Leaving Islam for Democratiya –
Kazem went to Thailand in 1973 to do postgraduate studies in engineering. There were many Pakistani as well as Bangladeshi students there, and they discussed what had happened in Bangladesh in 1971. The Pakistani students dismissed most of the claims of the Bangladeshis – the numbers killed were exaggerated, there were no rapes at all, not one.
Now, the interesting point was that whenever the atrocities of the Pakistani Islamic army were mentioned to them, they were all adamant that we (the Bengalis) were to be blamed for that. Why? Simply, because we were not good Muslims. How? If we were good Muslims, we would not have voted for the Awami League … Therefore, they opined that the genocide was not really a genocide! It was getting rid of the non-Muslims. After all, the non-Muslims were not really human beings. (p. 195.)
Drat – the second paragraph was meant to be indented. The first para is my summary, the second is a direct quote.
“There was also a chilling thing on the BBC’s ‘Have your say’ on the Bhutto assassination.”
OB: Here is another one!
One dissenting voice on 28th Dec in BBC NEWS, is that of Omar Mohammad, who lives in London. “I was not a supporter of Benazir Bhutto and I am not surprised she was killed. She was not that loved in Pakistan and while there may be some support for her at the [Abubakr] mosque, it is not a majority. This is very creepy stuff > “Islam does not allow women a political role. So I believe she was an apostate, < not a Muslim, and I will not be remembering her in my prayers." The following is also a very good read and ties in with the above. Islam’s Shame
Lifting The Veil of Tears
by Ibn Warraq
Profoundly Anti-Woman
Islam took the legend of Adam and Eve [2] from the Old Testament and adapted it in its own fashion. The creation of mankind from one person is mentioned in the following suras:
4.1. 0 Mankind! Be careful of your duty to your Lord who created you from a single soul and from it created its mate and from them twain hath spread abroad a multiple of men and women.
39.6. He created you from one being, then from that (being) He made its mate.
7.189. He it is who did create you from a single soul and therefrom did make his mate that he might take rest in her.
That’s the one I saw, Marie-Therese – it was someone else quoting the person who believed BB was ‘an apostate.’ Do you have the url for Omar M’s comment?
And for Ibn Warraq’s piece? Leaving Islam is of course by (edited by) Ibn Warraq.
OB: I remember some while ago Rockingham, [I think,] showing Doug how to create a tiny url. He cottoned on real fast how to do it properly. Clueless me, could not grasp how to do it properly. So as a consequence will you, OB, at some convenient time – please show me the ropes.
“There was also a chilling thing on the BBC’s ‘Have your say’ on the Bhutto assassination.”
“One dissenting voice on 28th Dec in BBC NEWS, is that of Omar Mohammad, who lives in London.”
news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7163127.stm
On a similar note, SEE:
“For now here is Islam’s Shame Lifting The Veil of Tears [edited by]Ibn Warraq”
Profoundly Anti-Woman
http://www.secularhumanism.org/library/fi/warraq
Allen bearing in mind that the moslem population in Europe is growing at a far greater rate than that of the host population is it enough just to hope that only a minority of moslems hold the opinions you refer to in your post? Isnt that gamboling with our childrens future.
“Therefore, they opined that the genocide was not really a genocide! It was getting rid of the non-Muslims.”
Gosh, does not a brainwashed mentality such as this one scare one to death.
No it was not ‘really’ genocide. What in ‘its’ opinion was it then ‘really’? A tea Party? Or what?
“It was getting rid of the non-Muslims.
After all, the non-Muslims were not really human beings.”
What were they then? If they were not in ‘its’ eyes ‘really’ human beings. Rabbits? Or what?
“does not a brainwashed mentality such as this one scare one to death.”
Yes. It does. It certainly horrified (and scared to death) the author of that piece, which is part of why he left Islam.
What they were then was what people always are when other people decide they are not really human – something a step or more lower that it is okay to kill or enslave or rape or degrade or torture or all those. People are, most unfortunately, all too good at doing that. To some extent that seems to have been what was going on at Goldenbridge and the other industrial schools – the people in charge had somehow convinced themselves that the children were all in some lesser category that deserved harsh treatment simply because they were in that (imaginary) category.
This is what people were getting at when they disagreed with my skepticism about the term ‘human dignity’ – and I see their point. I still wish there were a term without the inflationary aspect that ‘dignity’ has but I do see the need to forbid that impulse to shove some people into a lower category.
“Something a step or more lower”
What I find very problematic to be au fait with is – that if they feel so besmirched and despoiled by those whom they consider [a step] lower than themselves – why the hell then do they in the first instance want to touch them [even in the slightest] with their own bodies?! If they are by them so sickened and repudiated – why touch them at all? Why do they also waste energy on enslaving or torturing them? Can they just not kill them and get them out of the way forever. Just wipe them off the face of the earth in a flash. Would that not be a better solution? They are after all in the long run only psychologically giving themselves a hard time.
“What they were then was what people always are when other people decide they are not really human – something a step or more lower that it is okay to kill or enslave or rape or degrade or torture or all those. People are, most unfortunately, all too good at doing that.”
OB, 1 Jan 08
“There are no ‘unborn children’; there’s no such thing as an unborn child; mawkish language-manipulation is no substitute for argument… If it’s such a serious moral issue, then address it seriously, not with tricks.
“And it’s not all that serious anyway. It’s worked up, rather than serious.”
OB, 25 Sept 07
Jeezis – Jimmy Doyle again? Still obsessing about something I said in October? Still so obsessed you have to comment on it a third time?
Fine: no, I don’t think an embryo or a foetus is a person in the way someone who has been born is a person. I think an embryo is ‘human’ in the sense of belonging to the same species, but not in the sense that it has full human rights of the kind that its mother has. I think the mature female human whose body the embryo or foetus occupies has rights that trump those of the embryo or foetus. No, I don’t feel guilty or abashed about that; no, I don’t think that’s an inconsistency; no, I’m not struck all of a heap by your juxtaposition. I think women’s rights trump foetal ‘rights’, that’s all.
Now…surely you have something better to do than reading comments on a website that you obviously despise just so that you can keep recycling something I said last October? I mean, dude, get a sense of proportion – I’m not the only person who believes in abortion rights, you know! Why not go gnaw on someone else’s ankle for awhile? This obsessiveness is unhealthy.
(Mind you, it is also quite funny…)