December 12, 2011   180 notes

Mohandas Gandhi on Sharia Law

thecallus:

squashedcomments:

thecallus:

mohandasgandhi:

I find that those who have the biggest aversion to Shari’a law are those who haven’t studied the various schools at all or know anything about Islam. I’m saying this as an Atheist. The responses I received sound like they came straight from Western right-wing talking points. Yes, there are countries with statutes in place that claim to be based on Islamic doctrine that are rather brutish and what we would consider to be unjust. For instance, a lot of you came to me concerned about honor killings but the Qur’an doesn’t say anything about honor killings. It says not to kill.

Actually, the Qur’an observes the classic paradox observed by the Bible and many other foundational scriptures: it simultaneously denounces and demands killing. In a variety of contexts. Scholars would note that deities have historically mirrored societies in making the hypocritical assertion that we should all be peaceful
while perpetrating mass murder in the name of something or another.

Remember, god closed the Red Sea over Egyptians before instructing us not to kill, definitively. “Dad can be a mean drunk or something,” local priest notes.

It’s a lot like all those damn stop lights that simultaneously say “stop” and “go” at the same time. I mean, one light turns great at the same time another turns red. Could it get more confusing? Talk about mixed signals!

Or, maybe we could use some of the intellectual tools about context, perception, and so on that we generally master right after object permanence.

“Thou Shalt Not Kill” is pretty unequivocal, and I’m positive it bore no asterisk. This isn’t about context, it’s about an explicit rule that most biblical figures break - including god. Which is weird, because he was supposed to stop that shit after the flood.

I’m not sure if shooting the messenger is specifically ruled on scripturally, but again: killing bad. Ideological inconsistency bad. It’s not my fault that these storybooks have deep flaws - there’s a reason I don’t use them as my basis for living and recommend that others adopt my strategy.

The prohibition on murder (alternately translated as “thou shalt not kill” or “thou shalt not murder”) exists in pretty much any legal system you’d choose to examine. And there are always types of killing that don’t constitute murder. (In the U.S., justifiable homicide such as self defense, accident, excuse, war, execution, etc.) If you’re taking somebody’s sacred text as a children’s book, fine. There’s no reason for you to spend energy thinking about something you don’t care about, save for a desire to interact humanely with the theistic 85% of the world.

There’s no need for you to engage anybody’s sacred text on a serious level. And if we’re just trolling, belittling people who do will get us off to an auspicious start. So long as we’re making conclusion things we don’t care enough to try to engage, I also recommend the “snow disproves global warming” approach. And maybe the “Feminism is a lie, how about Equalism!”

(via thecallus)

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    If we’re talking about ideological contradictions (or, at least, tensions)...text...
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