There is this very interesting article in the new that I have read today:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/turkey-anti-l...24412.html
 
It’s about some of the “Pious” people of Istanbul who are gathering in front of the Statue of the Ottoman Ruler Fatih Sultan Mehmet (1432-1481) wearing caps with Turkish flags on it or holding Turkish flags in their hands and claiming that LGBTQ people are corrupting Turkish society and using their democratic right of demonstration (?) for that.
 
1) I already said in another post that political Islamist betrayed the Independence movement that lead to the foundation of the modern Turkish in 1923 and have collaborated with imperialistic Greek and British armies against the armies of the republic of Turkey. I also said that religious sects and Islamic fundamentalist movements have constantly created trouble and disorder within the Ottoman empire until the declaration of the Turkish Republic in April 23 1923. So if the statue of the ottoman Sultan in front of which they have been demonstrating was to come alive, the first thing he would do would be the chop their heads off.
 
2) LGBTQ people exist. I personally am not homosexual or anything of that sort. I am also a person who has religious beliefs, so I don’t deny the teachings of religion either.
The issue is this: These people exist. You may not like them, you may find it inappropriate, against nature or, against religious teachings (to which I don’t agree), but they are there, and they are among us. They could be working in the supermarket to which you are going. They could be your dentist, they could be your teachers, your waiters anyone. Also In historical accounts from the 1700’s and so there are many sources who mention these people and we are seeing that homosexuality emerges as a visible phenomenon even in the Renaissance Era and before that. There are accounts of Ottoman Sultans being bisexual and there are accounts of “Boys” or in Greek “Paida” being offered as gift to serve the sexual needs of the people to whom they have been offered.
   And today, we know these people They are our friends, colleagues, neighbors, relatives, anything. And these people have rights and the must have their rights, and they have the right to defend their rights. And they have the right to create a debate and to claim their rights such as same sex marriage.
   I am not going to debate these issues here. But there is nothing un-Islamic in saying that these people should have rights and that their rights should be protected. Saying that LGBTQ movements are corrupting society has more to do with fascism than it has to do with Islam.
 
/Before anybody asks the question I will reply immediately: There are some verses in the Kuran that refer to the inhabitants of the city of Sodom and say that there will be a punishment for them. So we may say that İslam (just like must other religions) does not have an entirely positive approach on the subject. But this doesn’t mean that these people cannot have rights and that they cannot defend and fight or expand these rights.
So once again: we see that dogmatic and highly traditional religious approaches are completely unfit for the needs of our modern, industrialized, urbanized and increasingly cosmopolitan societies.
 
3) There are times when I read news about people attacking the very physical integrity of these persons for no apparent reason. See: A God-fearing person wouldn’t do that. "Having a 'Fear of God' in you" means that you are a person who knows that there will be consequences for your action in this world even if you are not punished by the laws of a corrupts government. It means that you are not allowed to harm another person, or another living being simply because you can or because you believe you have right or the “religious duty” to do it. To speak openly, I was told that what we call “the wrath of God” will be upon a person who decides to harm (in any way) another person because of his/her own lack of tolerance and dogmatism.
Beside this, on the issue of the “wrath of God”. In my readings have discovered that this “consequence of deliberate actions” is also a reality for groups of people and societies. So a government, or a formation that calls itself a “government” can not freely kill its own young women and oppress its people permanently and think there won’t be a consequence. I am not only talking about the fact that such a regime will be remembered for what for centuries to come. I am also saying that there will be a consequence from the side of God for each and every one of these persons. The Kuran does not specify if these consequences are to happen in this world or in the afterlife but it does specify in many occasions that there will be consequences for these people.

There are about 50 Muslim majority countries, but homosexuality is only legal in ten of them:

Kazakhstan
Mali
Niger
Turkey
Indonesia
Northern Cyprus
Bahrain
Albania
Azerbaijan

This is how religion is harmful to human beings, and why it needs to go. As a transgender female, I want to live the only life that I am capable of living instead of trying to "please" a nonexistent god.

Here are the latest words that were uttered by the “leader” of my country:
 
"While the unity between woman and man based on legitimacy is scorned; perversion, immorality and crooked relationships are being encouraged intentionally,"
 
1) No one ever did that. What is he even talking about?
 
2) That’s what I was pointing to in my first post in this topic: When you are a spiritual person, even a spiritual person on the most basic level, a) You don’t make hate speeches and b) You start seeing it as you duty to stand up for the basic rights of minority groups of any kind who are being oppressed simply because somebody needs a scapegoat of some sort, or because some people who have few understanding on religion and even less understanding about the governance of a nation-state are believing themselves to be in a position to make judgments on these issues or other similar issue.
 
And 3) This is a copy-pasted version or the Putinist doctrine. The big guy has just given his decree on how any type of union between two adult individuals should be so there can be no debate on that.
 
And 4) Just look at the choice of words he is using. This is so in line with great muslim philosophers like Omar Khayyam or Mevlana Jallaladin Rumi. He / they just happened to have understood everything on Islamic philosophy. I’m just too ignorant to understand the real meaning of these philosophies. In fact who am I, who are we when his excellence has just issued his verdict.
 
(And what an Ego? I really can’t believe it. What an Ego he has)

You were told that the wrath of god would be upon you if you did a thing, they were told that the wrath of god would be upon them if they didn't.

There's no rule or law that spiritual people can't leak hate speech all over the place, and, in point of fact in mere reality, the spiritual™ demographic is well represented in hate speech. Might have something to do with hate speech in their holy books. Just maybe.

(November 3, 2022 at 1:57 am)The Grand Nudger Wrote: You were told that the wrath of god would be upon you if you did a thing, they were told that the wrath of god would be upon them if they didn't.

There's no rule or law that spiritual people can't leak hate speech all over the place, and, in point of fact in mere reality, the spiritual™ demographic is well represented in hate speech.  Might have something to do with hate speech in their holy books.  Just maybe.

Again Jagadish Vasudev (or Sadhguru) has a story on this:
 
“One man believes that God has four arms. The other believes that he has no arms. The first man builds a statue of God with four arms in the city center (because everybody knows that God has four arms). The second one gets angry so he chops those four arms away (because we all know that God doesn’t have arms). So a war of religion begins and people start killing one another because of this simple issue.”
 
But this is not what I am talking about. There is a great philosopher called Rumi (1207 AD – 1273 AD) who wrote many religious / philosophical verses and in one of these he is saying “I shall love all those who are created for the love of the One who has created them”. (This is very high caliber religious philosophy I am talking about). And one fact is that the gentleman that I have quoted in my previous post loves to make references to prominent Islamic thinkers like Rumi.
 
So I sent the previous post to demonstrate how easy it is for a populist politician to make quotations while believing and defending the exact opposite of that quotation.
 
And no. If the question is homosexuality, well, it is true that the approach of most religions on this issue is rather critical. But please remember that we are living in an age in which even the pope isn’t completely opposed to same-sex unions (https://www.euronews.com/2021/09/16/same...pe-francis).
 
And as of İslam, it is true that the holy book criticizes these issues (because of the story of Sodom and Gomora), but it does not include any punishment for homosexual acts.
 
This last one is an ongoing debate. And I am not a qualified theologian. But the way I understand it, there is criticism on the issue, but no complete condemnation or damnation like treatment associated with it.
 
Anyway: Even if I was wrong, a head of state does not make this type of hate speech. His duty must be to ensure the protection of the rights of minorities and the maintenance of the rule of law.
 
And again: I don’t think hate speech can have a place in any religion. Remember the words of Pope Francis who said that “A man who erects wall between different people cannot be a Christian” (while referring to Donald Trump and his wall on the Mexican Border). I totally agree with that.
 
See: There is a universal element in true faith. If you have reached the level one or level zero of spirituality, you must have a certain understanding (as a person on a spiritual path) about the existence of a certain universal being that his omnipresent inside every human being. (That’s how I can describe it at best). So I can tell you, with great certainty, that a man or woman who does not perceive or acknowledge the existence of this universal element inside every human being is neither a spiritual person nor a person happens to be on a spiritual path.
 
   Because if we compare this to the alphabet, this is letter A. Someone who makes hate speeches is illiterate. He can’t even say “I only know the first four letters of the alphabet”. No. That’s an illiterate person who has nothing spiritual in him / her other than (perhaps) some theoretical / borrowed and often false information on what he / she calls “religion” or “faith”.

In short:
1) There is a punishment for adultery in Islamic law (that is not extremely severe or brutal in nature – read the article -) and some scholars a) have magnified the punishment for such acts and b) they decided to include homosexuality into this “those of your women who commit illegal intercourse” definition. (which is totally wrong according to me).

2) No one was so obsessed with homosexuality in the Muslim world until the end of the 19th century. It is the Salafist / Wahabi / fundamentalist and political Islamist movements (that were greatly influenced by some extreme ideologies of the West) that turned it into “a crime that will lead you to eternal damnation” (That’s history I am talking about: go and check the article). In fact, don’t get angry with me, but I think they took it directly from Christianity (that’s my theory at least ).

Whatever, no one talks like this in 2022. Not even a political creature who is Half Putin, Half Jair Bolsonaro, Half İbrahim Raisi. I mean. An adult person doesn’t talk like that.

Yeah, stories for all of this.......

Meanwhile, -any- punishment for adultery is brutal in nature. I'll meet you there when you realize it. Hate speech holds a priveliged place in any religion founded on hate speech, like your own, as much as you might detest it today as a contemporary and secularized believer. The shit you're complaining about isn't a bug, it's a feature.

My Wikipedia link is gone so I will put it again:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_in_Islam#Zina_verse

Here it says:
“˹As for˺ those of your women who commit illegal intercourse—call four witnesses from among yourselves. If they testify, confine the offenders to their homes until they die or Allah ordains a ˹different˺ way for them. And the two among you who commit this sin—discipline them. If they repent and mend their ways, relieve them. Surely Allah is ever Accepting of Repentance, Most Merciful.”

- It’s about adultery. This was a serious issue in the past. Because as you probably know, the whole institution of matrimony was invented so that children would have a father. So if people commit adultery, and it is proven by witnesses, you will imprison them in their houses until they are disciplined and they process to mend their ways.

The reason for this could be this: In ancient agricultural cultures, if a man and woman were for instance, working together in the field, and nobody was around, it is said that is quite easy for them to start to get busy in a way that is much easier than our current more civilized and individualized societies. So I see it as normal for a religion to bring some restrictions to this and say “until they repent and promess to never do it again”.

(November 3, 2022 at 1:57 am)The Grand Nudger Wrote: You were told that the wrath of god would be upon you if you did a thing, they were told that the wrath of god would be upon them if they didn't.

Funny how the wrath of God is usually expressed as the wrath of man standing in for God, unless it's a hurricane, and then the people of Pensacola pray very hard and the hurricane hits the less faithful in Biloxi instead.