Muslim women dont need saving from their religion

[guillaumeb]

From the article:

In an average week, I deliver presentations to hundreds of people on various topics related to Islam and Muslims. Oftentimes, such presentations yield real changes in public perception of Muslims, but almost as often, I’m confronted with antiquated, negative stereotypes.
I recently spoke to a group of 80 college-educated, mostly liberal women in Silicon Valley, certainly one of the most progressive regions of the United States. I was astonished to find that, despite revelations of widespread sexual harassment of women in Hollywood, the tech industry and other professions in the United States that have spawned the #MeToo movement, what concerned these women most was “saving” American Muslim women — from Islam.

To read more:

https://www.religionnews.com/2018/03/06/muslim-women-dont-need-saving-from-their-religion/

[trotsky]

1. That's her opinion.

Many Muslim women disagree.

[guillaumeb]

2. What percentage agree, and what percentage disagree? eom

[trotsky]

3. Why don't you go find out?

Oh wait, in some countries you won't even be able to talk to women to ask them. I guess that might skew the results.

[guillaumeb]

4. You did say many.

Many is a very vague term. Many in a group of six could be four. Perhaps you are part of the group to which she refers in the article.

[trotsky]

5. Oh yeah, you judge an opinion's validity by how many people hold it.

I forgot that you are the king of argumentum ad populum.

But since we can't survey all Muslim women, I guess we'll never know.

It's just important to note that you only posted ONE viewpoint. There are others that are just as valid.

[guillaumeb]

6. You did make a claim of many.

But remember that your response is only ONE viewpoint.

[trotsky]

7. And equally valid.

So now what? One viewpoint says Muslim women aren't oppressed. Another says they are. Kinda comes down to what you've been conditioned to believe oppression is, doesn't it? And perhaps - just perhaps - religious indoctrination affects that conditioning?

[guillaumeb]

8. Back to the religionindoctrination theme again?

What have you been conditioned to believe?

[trotsky]

9. Whatever my church taught at the time.

Thankfully I broke free.

[guillaumeb]

10. Or, you think that you did.

Did you attend school? What of that conditioning?

[trotsky]

11. I'd be happy to address that on another thread. Feel free to start it.

However, you are veering way off course from the topic of this thread because you didn't like how you were being exposed.

I asked if religious indoctrination could have an effect on how one perceives the oppression of women.

Do you agree or disagree? Simple question with a simple answer.

[guillaumeb]

12. What is being exposed is your tactics.

[Cuthbert Allgood]

17. Your non-answer is glaringly obvious.

[guillaumeb]

18. The agenda is blindingly obvious.

[trotsky]

25. You got me.

My tactics are to hold you responsible for what you say. Damn, you figured it out.

[AtheistCrusader]

27. "Muslim women" is a vague term too, established in your headline/subject line.

How many does THAT represent?

It's not universal, I know that, even if we just take the activists at their word.

[Voltaire2]

13. Great. I guess an appallingly misogynistic

religion and its theocratic states that enforce sharia laws on their subjects is just fine with this woman.

[guillaumeb]

15. I would ask if you read the article,

but the nuance of your comments reveals you very well.

[Voltaire2]

19. Did you read it?

It is an embarrassment of whataboutisms.
According to the author voluntarily following sharia is just the same as a theocratic state imposing medieval laws on its subjects.

It is a shit post. You should try reading it again with your eyes open this time and consider what this woman is defending.

[guillaumeb]

20. I did, but you did not answer.

So I will make an assumption, and attach this piece:

On Shariah, or Muslim religious law, as a force holding women back, I pointed out that many of these educated Muslim women in the United States — including me — practice Shariah daily, and that Shariah, like Halakha for Jews, addresses rituals, values and principles on topics such as visiting the sick, caring for parents and visiting a neighbor. It should not be conflated with the oppressive laws that one might find in some Muslim-majority nations.

[Act_of_Reparation]

26. There's a fundamental assumption there.

The assumption being that women can't be a part of a system that oppresses women. They very well can. Look at the GOP, for example.

[guillaumeb]

21. More for you to read:

For most of the world’s 2 billion Muslims, Sharia isn’t a list of immutable rules, but rather a body of scriptural guidelines subject to interpretation in accordance with the many schools of Islam and the different societies within which it is practiced.
“A majority of Muslims agree that reasonable people will interpret the Sharia differently,” Lombardi says:

https://www.snopes.com/news/2017/06/19/what-is-sharia-law/

[Voltaire2]

22. Here are some fun facts.

In Egypt and many other Islamic states a woman’s testimony in family court carries half the weight of a mans.

In Algeria as in many other Islamic states, women are considered minors under the authority of a husband or male relative.

Mauritania imposes the full sharia criminal code in addition to the more typical family law codes. Amputations, whippings, stoning

Somalia: full sharia. Sudan, same. You can be stoned to death for adultery.

Iran and Saudi Arabia - women are second class citizens. Both impose full family and criminal sharia.

[Cuthbert Allgood]

24. Hey hey hey

I believe women got the right to drive in Saudi Arabia last year, so...

[nil desperandum]

32. Yep

and they don't even need a male family member's permission! What a huge step forward!

Of course they still need permission to work or travel abroad from a male family member so their ability to actually enjoy the new law may be somewhat limited in reality.

[guillaumeb]

33. Which does not refute what I posted.

[Voltaire2]

34. It took you two weeks to come up with

that response?

[guillaumeb]

35. I was busy with political organizing, and working on 2 campaigns.

[Voltaire2]

37. And took time off to defend institutionalized

brutal religious misogyny.

[guillaumeb]

38. I had no idea you were an expert on the essential nature of Islam.

Nor, one assumes, does the author of this piece.

[trotsky]

30. And for most of the world's 2.2 billion Christians, their bible isn't to be taken literally.

But a hell of a lot of them do, and they're the ones causing the most problems.

Now given that you also decree that no one can define a religion for anyone else, you've got quite the conundrum on your hands.

[More_Cowbell]

14. I think there's damage to non-Muslim women

This is probably an unpopular opinion, but to me the hijab is a symbol to *some* (not all) Muslim men that some women are to be respected, and some women don't have to be respected.

[guillaumeb]

16. And what of non-hijab wearing Muslim women?

Are they also sending a message?

[MineralMan]

23. None of them?

I doubt that makes sense.

[Cuthbert Allgood]

28. This woman might disagree

Iranian Woman Gets Two Years in Prison for Publicly Removing Her Hijab

A woman in Iran, for instance, was sentenced to two years in prison for publicly removing her headscarf, or hijab, to protest an unjust law. It’s 2018 and women are still being punished in the Middle East for choosing not to wear a specific religious garment.

The woman (who wasn’t named) intends to appeal the verdict, but in a country like Iran, there’s no guarantee the courts will rule in her favor. In fact, the law is on the side of the prosecution, unfortunately.

Iranian law, in place since the Islamic Revolution of 1979, stipulates that all women, Iranian or foreign, Muslim or non-Muslim, must be fully veiled in public at all times.

The prosecutor says this woman wanted to “encourage corruption,” but you could also say she was fighting a kind of corruption by standing up to an unfair law that treats women as second-class citizens. Her sentence is considered “light” by the prosecutor, but any time spent in prison for removing a headscarf is too much.

[Cartoonist]

29. From another post on DU

An Iranian woman who publicly removed her veil to protest against a mandatory hijab law has been sentenced to two years in prison, prosecutors say
_

Women are loving themselves some religion.

[nil desperandum]

31. Well now...

that's great news!

Since she's clearly able to point out flaws in our society that definitely negates any problems for Muslim women.

I seem to recall christians had a saying about that sort of activity...something about before pointing out the mote in someone else's eye you might consider the beam in your own eyes...they called those people something....what was that word?

[edhopper]

36. Why are we looking at what the GOP is doing

when the Democratic Party obviously has problems we should deal with.

I guess that is how it works here.