refuting misconceptions:1-women in Islam

[Caecilian]

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Mo3 and the Taliban are both muslims. If we want to evaluate islam, with regard to, say, its attitudes towards women, we need to consider both the liberal islam of people like mo3 and the brutal fundamentalist islam of the Taliban. Plus everything in between. And the picture that emerges is not good.

i agree with u but i just want to add that they are minority if u want to know if they are right or not compare what they are doing with the history of islam and also dont judge islam by what some muslims are doing and u r choosing a ppl who even lack education if some of their scholars says something they follow without thinking(search about what muslim scholars say about what bin laden did)

The nature of religion is such that it is impossible to falsify or verify any specific religious interpretation with religion itself. Religion provides no means to do so since there is no shared mechanism to conclusively verify or falsify the various claims. At the core of every religion are unfalsifiable claims. Anybody can start his own religion today, based on quran or any text you choose and start interpreting away. It does not help to suggest, as you do, to verify the different interpretations of the quran with the history of islam because the history of religious interpretation says nothing on intrinsic truth. Just as the history of catholicism is not a case for the truth of catholicism. In fact history shows that right from the start controversy on interpretations has been around.

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Exactly. I can't remember who described theology as 'intellectual tennis without a net' (might've been Dennett), but its a very accurate description. There simply is no way to assess the validity of one religious claim to truth (or veridicality, or scriptual validity, or whatever) over another. Its all just interpretation, without any possibility of verification from a source outside of religious discourse.

What this means is that it really doesn't matter what religious scholars say. They're always going to disagree with each other anyway. What matters is what religious people do in the name of their religion. And here the record of islam towards women is appalling.

For example: somewhere between 78% and 97% of egyptian women have been subjected to genital mutilation. Source: wiki article

For example: women in muslim countries are frequently denied an education (Afghanistan Male literacy Rate 43% Female 13%; Pakistan M 63% F 36%; Egypt M 83% F 60%; Senegal M 51% F 29% etc). Source: CIA World Factbook

For example:

[mo3taz3nbar]

What I'm saying is that you promised to refute misconceptions about women in Islam, but so far you have primarily posted quotes from your religious text and links to other people's thoughts. You have, from the beginning, tried to control your presentation in order to distribute just the right 'information' to make just the right 'points', but that method has failed to show that we hold misconceptions. When you are asked a direct question, you either ignore it or link to someone else's thoughts.

For the most part, what I am convinced of is that you might live in a very liberal Muslim household and/or society and, therefore, have a very biased perspective about it in general. Plus you are piously religious and drinking deeply of the qur'an flavored Kool-Aid. Not very convincing in my opinion.

am not Quoting from religious books am quoting from the Quran which have the highest authority
what the Quran says is what muslims have to do so when am quoting from the Quran thats enough evidence that this is what islam says

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For example:

lol cant u recognise the desert in the back thats the way they live and wear. u guys must see some muslims raised in the same culture u have cuz u r confusing culture with religion

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At last I know that some of u will continue talking about this like Islam orders beating your wife and will ignore the explanation of this exception and also will ignore the verses I mentioned under woman as a wife but I did my best explaining this.

I'm not ignoring your explanation. Your explanation made things perfectly clear, as have all the other Muslims who have come to this site to try and defend their beliefs.

At the end of the day, you just confirmed that Islam allows a man to beat his wife. It matters not that it says to hit her gently, you shouldn't be hitting her at all.

hitting her slightly with something like a toothbrush as a warning before divorce after a year of trying to change something which is ruining the family and its not preferable to do so and muhammed (pbuh) himself never did that(u r making a big deal of this)

[Scented Nectar]

hitting her slightly with something like a toothbrush as a warning before divorce after a year of trying to change something which is ruining the family and its not preferable to do so and muhammed (pbuh) himself never did that(u r making a big deal of this)

What is the punishment a man gets from his wife when he is lewd or flirting?

[AtheistPhil]

lol cant u recognise the desert in the back thats the way they live and wear. u guys must see some muslims raised in the same culture u have cuz u r confusing culture with religion.

The "it's not islam it is the culture that is wrong" argument seems great, in theory only. Because it acknowledges that the teachings of the Qur'an and primitive misogynistic cultures are not incompatible.
If the Qur'an clearly condemned the abuses we see nowadays in the countries applying the sharia law, then no islamic country would ever condone these things. But the reality is different: the sharia is an explicitly islamic set of laws which comes from a certain (and common) interpretation of the Qur'an and the hadiths.


Mo3taz3nbar, tell me how do you know which interpretation of the Qur'an is the correct one ? How do you know which hadiths are divinely inspired ? Which scholars should I trust ? The salafi scholars ? The shi'a scholars ? The ahmadiyya scholars ? Trusting the most popular interpretation or the interpretation of the highest scholar cannot give you the truth.

As Purple Rabbit said: "The nature of religion is such that it is impossible to falsify or verify any specific religious interpretation with religion itself."

[Shell B]

am not Quoting from religious books am quoting from the Quran

The Quran is a religious book.

hitting her slightly with something like a toothbrush as a warning before divorce after a year of trying to change something which is ruining the family

That's abuse, both psychological and physical. The emotional pain involved with being hit with a feather or with a brick is the same.

[Violet]

hitting her slightly with something like a toothbrush as a warning before divorce after a year of trying to change something which is ruining the family

That's abuse, both psychological and physical. The emotional pain involved with being hit with a feather or with a brick is the same.

I don't think so... being hit with a feather is more likely to instill laughter and confusion than it is emotional hurt. Also... as with physical pain, the larger/heavier/more obviously dangerous object will instill more emotional pain (If say, the individual recognizes that the other person is willing to hit them with an obviously dangerous object). And let's not forget the terror of being hit with a brick (as apposed to a feather) that the victim anticipates.

Enter from here, a state of hopelessness and fear.

[Shell B]

I don't know, Sae. Obviously, being hit with a brick is far more dangerous and bound to cause far more suffering. However, having someone as close to you as your husband hit you with anything in anger is terrifying. It's the look on their face, the aggressiveness of their actions and the uncaring nature with which they treat you that scars emotionally. I sincerely believe that an abused woman could be terrorized with a feather. Don't get me wrong, I prefer the feather scenario to the brick scenario, but I just can't see an abused woman laughing in the face of her attacker. I don't care if he hits her with a stuffed Care Bear, it's still scary to her.

[Minimalist]

i disagree with u in this what anyone do is taking a text out of the Quran

Of course you do. You're one of the sheep.

Do yourself a favor. Stop reading that same stupid book over and over ( it really never gets any better!) and start learning about history, archaeology and science. Then you can relegate your fairy tales to the fiction section of a library.

[Violet]

I don't know, Sae. Obviously, being hit with a brick is far more dangerous and bound to cause far more suffering. However, having someone as close to you as your husband hit you with anything in anger is terrifying. It's the look on their face, the aggressiveness of their actions and the uncaring nature with which they treat you that scars emotionally. I sincerely believe that an abused woman could be terrorized with a feather. Don't get me wrong, I prefer the feather scenario to the brick scenario, but I just can't see an abused woman laughing in the face of her attacker. I don't care if he hits her with a stuffed Care Bear, it's still scary to her.

I understand the context you are specifying now... but in this case it matters little that it be brick, feather, stuffed carebear, or whathaveyou... as it is the anger that terrifies.

Also... assuming the woman hasn't yet been abused to the point they are 'broken'... the laughing in the face of an attacker scenario is a possibility. I don't think that the feather can terrify an abused woman... unless the particularly rare event occurs where she channels her hatred/fear into the feather instead of the abuser themself or some more painful device of torture it might use on her Or perhaps if the feather is used as a signal of a yet more brutal atrocity (conditioned response).

[Shell B]

Also... assuming the woman hasn't yet been abused to the point they are 'broken'... the laughing in the face of an attacker scenario is a possibility

Absolutely, but she would probably (unfortunately) regret it.

I don't think that the feather can terrify an abused woman

Don't get me wrong. I think that a man (or woman) can terrify a person with a feather. It's not the feather that is terrifying, as you indicated above.