God's law or private law?

[Leonardo17]

This seems like good advice to me. There's not enough self-hate in the world. 

I can't speak about Iran. To me, though, people often seem to confuse self-generated private law with God's law. They assume that because they feel really strongly about it, that God must be supporting it. This is what comes of having people say "I don't have a religion; I have a personal relationship with Jesus." 

Since America is built, supposedly, on self-reliance and individual liberty, the American brands of religion often support these independent qualities. More traditional religions, including Islam I suppose, say far more about the responsibilities one has to the group. The written law still has some sway with old-fashioned religions -- to be a good member of that religion, one might have to actually control his own desires. Americans hate the term obedience, and not pursuing one's desire is seen as weakness. 

By ignoring the difficult demands that traditional religion put on people, and assuming that what I really want is what God must want too, we lose a key method of doing self-criticism.

Recently on another thread we were talking about a certain TV series. It was explained to me that, according to the show, if something is really really important to you, you no longer have to follow the moral norms of your society to get or protect that thing. In other words, even for atheists the voice of the community is very easy to ignore -- if you personally decide that morality is not relevant to you, you can forget it. 

We need far more self-criticism, and more attention to ethical examples that demonstrate going against one's own desires.

Iran is ruled by the new doctrine called "Velayat-e faqih" or in Arabic ولاية الفقيه, literally translated to "state of the jurisprudence (my personal translation)":

https://institute.global/policy/what-velayat-e-faqih

and

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judicial_s...ic_of_Iran

It's a very new law formulated in the 70s, and it's pure dictatorship: it says that all power is in the hands of a crooked old fart called the "Faqih" (hence the name), so 1 man holds all power in the state, the government believes he is "heavenly divine", the current "Faqih" is this drauger:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ali_Khamenei

Doesn't this ring a bell? North Korea, Saudi Arabia are all carbon copies, all are disgusting states with terrible human rights violations.

The funny thing is that Uncle sam loves to take allies from these states and turn a blind eye to their medieval scam systems called governments; while in reality they are nothing but cutthroat gangsters.

Iran is using Islam just like Saudi Arabia used it before it, so the OP should direct his criticism to the master manipulator instead of the small pawns.

Don't forget that uncle Sam and aunt Hillary loved to sell weapons to the Shiite Imam so he kill the Sunni of Iraq.

I am a bit reserved on the criticism of Arab monarchies and even some dictatorships. Egypt for instance is not faring that bad after all. In Jordan the elite are very rich and the people are poor and ignorant but again, it’s a peaceful nation who is not doing any harm to anyone. Morocco is I country I would like to live in (Also Tunisia) if I have a steady source of income. These are countries that are still working. Like Pakistan if you like. It’s not really heaven, but it’s not really hell either. And most of all they are peaceful nations. Saudi Arabia is more problematic. They are promoting their Salafist version of Islam which I also don’t like. Their money, and Pakistani money is said to flow to the Taliban and even to Al-Qaida. So these two have some problems. India (even with Modi) is still a better place than both these countries.
 
   But the difference is here: Saudis were a nation without flowing water in Ottoman times. That’s who they are in reality. They are desert Bedouins and their king is the decadence of the Sheikh’s of these Bedouins. So it’s normal for them to be very traditional people (And yet even they are gradually easing the social exclusion of their women). So I think they won’t be resilient to change as time passes.
 
   The Iranian regime is totally crazy at this point. They don’t know what they are doing, they don’t know what they are saying, It’s not even possible for my generation (let alone millennials) to approve of anything that they are doing. So it has become a north-Korea like or Putin-Like country. They only thing I can say is: “Ok, you tried, you tried 40 years, So don’t be a modern Ramses, Just go away”. I am not saying this: The Iranians both in Iran and everywhere in the world are saying this. So if God is still the creator of all these people… I mean….