Islamaphobia?

The things op pointed out as problematic to feminists and the west, are the same in many other religions,funny how theyre not focused on. I suppose its expected since 9/11 and subsequent attacks.

What rights did women have in the Arabian peninsula prior to Islam or slaves for that matter zero. Fine bringing up the negatives but you cannot be bothered to highlight any positives due to your blinkers.

Thank you I feel so welcome on this forum, this isn't the first muslim.islam bashing thread on mumsnet.

Are we having a problem with English comprehension? Or did you just x-post with my last one?

Cote, he still married a nine year old, did he not?

"Ephebophile then. "

It is not a question of -phile but of what was normal at the time.

It wasn't just Mohammad and it certainly wasn't just Arabs who considered girls to have become old enough to marry upon their first period. In medieval European society, it was normal to marry children when they reach puberty. In 16th Century England, it was a felony to have sex with a girl under the age of 10. That is 1000 YEARS after Mohammad.

I'm not saying it's great to marry off or have sex with 10 year old girls. What I am saying is that Mohammad in the year 600 or so was not singularly egregious in this respect. Marrying at or shortly after puberty was a perfectly normal practice at the time and for many centuries thereafter.

Wicked - If you didn't get my post, try reading it again.

If you need help, ask a question.

"if you actually look at Jesus and what he did. He was shocking because he sat with women (who were less than property) visited them in their homes and involved them in the church as much as the men"

Yeah well, if you really looked what Mohammad did for women, you would probably be similarly shocked. He ruled that women could own property, earn and keep their own money, divorce their husbands for a variety of reasons including what amounts to "I feel like it", and would keep their small children upon divorce. Woman had to be given money at the beginning of the marriage which she would keep in the case of divorce. That was in the year 600 or so.

Compare this to the status of women 1200 years later in the UK: Whatever women had passed to the husband when they married. Women couldn't have money of their own, because whatever they earned legally belonged to their husbands. Even if husband kicked them out, women could not get a divorce and had no right to see their children.

Yes, the modern world slowly caught up and passed the rights & status Mohammad gave women in the 7th Century, but there is no doubt that the change he brought to the rights and status of women back then was revolutionary and was significantly more advanced that anything Christian women saw for another 12 centuries.

Buffy, yes, I think believing in God is not a belief system.

But no to the tree diagram, because I don't think theism is a useful splitting point for understanding belief systems.

Mohammad is not a "paedophile" since he did not lay a finger on his 'wife' until she had her period and "became a woman" as was the practice at that time, and not only among Arabs. You might like to look into what life expectancy and age at marriage was around the world around the year 600.

Ephebophile then. Whatever, girls get their periods as early as 9 (in some cases earlier, like the 5 year old who ended up pregnant), and it is just not ethical to subject a girl of that age to PiV.

Mary was married off when she got her first period, but they did marry her to a widower, reasoning that he would keep his hands off her for a while longer than a young man would. (They also married her off because they had to, not because someone "fell in love" with her)

I have to say, with regard to scripture, the Christian faith does fare better. (Although that part about Mary is not canon)

However, as this clearly doesn't keep Christian men from oppressing women, I don't view this as a reason to promote Christianity over Islam.

"the knee jerk assumption I'd make that someone who identified themselves as an atheist (and I think that context is important because atheism is often sated as a sort of opposite to religious belief in that context) would also believe that there was a big bang and we evolved through natural selection"

I would like to think that everyone understands that there are mountains of evidence that support Big Bang and evolution of species through natural selection. Even the Pope said that Big Bang has happened and evolution is real.

People with religious faith who also have a brain can use it to work out that Big Bang does not rule out the possibility of a "creator God". It actually might well be how their God created our universe in a flash of light.

Evolution does mean that humans weren't "created" as we are now but developed into this shape over millions of years, but again, the smart ones argue that it was God who steered evolution towards the humans we are now.

Lass there is no point in making a fuss. If your faith cannot withstand people writing books or plays or cartoons then it is not strong faith. God is big enough to take a few jokes and even to be analysed and though about critically. As a person of faith I do question and examine my beliefs if I don't then i am following blindly instead of thinking about it and believing.

I actually don't have a problem with saying that atheism - in its most minimal sense - isn't a belief system. It clearly isn't, in the sense of a series of connected beliefs that form an internally coherent whole.

But atheism in its most minimal sense is often combined with a set of assumptions about the nature of reality that are commonly held together -commonly enough to be considered self-evident - we've been talking about some of them on this thread. Others would include the importance of personal autonomy, and the right to defend-determination.

An anthropologist looking from outside might well describe these as a system of belief, even though the systemic nature of these assumptions, values and beliefs insn't visible from the inside.

In that sense, I think it might be fair to describe atheism as part of a system of belief.

Oh ffs x 2 Cardinal O'Brien and St. Mary's

I agree with wicked if you actually look at Jesus and what he did. He was shocking because he sat with women (who were less than property) visited them in their homes and involved them in the church as much as the men. He was the first scholar who took men to task for divorcing women and leaving them destitue. He talked about the women driven to prostitution and rebuked the men that used them but not the women.

.WHY do people on this board try to defend Islam by attacking Christianity? It is like men who go,

Is anyone attacking Christianity? I didn't think I was nor that I was defending Islam. I have made disparaging comments about the Pope and the Catholic Church because that is the sect I know most about.

I have a great deal of time for former bishop Richard Holloway (Scottish Episcopalian ) who I heard using a Christmas Eve sermon , of all things, to criticise the other former Catholic bishop Keith O'Brien in relation to O'Brien's predilection for telling people what not to do in their bedrooms.

Why I was there is St. Mark's Episcopalian church has a non denominational music school attached to it and the choir is spine tingling lyrics good (the devil doesn't have all the best tunes)

"I'm just saying that science is more of a fuzzy business than it's made out to be"

Science was a rather fuzzy business back in Darwin's day, with little understanding of biology (let alone DNA) and no framework for rigorous scientific studies and peer review.

When you people criticising Darwin wake up one day in the year 2015, you will see that things have changed quite a bit.

Be anti-religion all you like. I am. But don't be ignorant.

CoteDAzur Fri 11-Dec-15 14:47:27
Mohammad is not a "paedophile" since he did not lay a finger on his 'wife' until she had her period and "became a woman" as was the practice at that time, and not only among Arabs. You might like to look into what life expectancy and age at marriage was around the world around the year 600.

It is laughable how people are so desperate to defend Islam that all they can do is drag Christianity into it. What exactly did Jesus say and do that was anti woman? Well?

I don't get it...WHY do people on this board try to defend Islam by attacking Christianity? It is like men who go, 'Well, women kill too...' Pathetic.

MEN and patriarchy are to blame for the shit women have to put up with, not religion. That is just a tool. But don't compare Jesus to the paedophile Mohammed. That is like comparing apples and oranges.

"I don't see the irony in saying that religious belief and critical thinking are incompatible."

Hermione, that was not what was said. Also religious belief and critical thinking are not incompatible. Are you confusing critical thinking with scientific thinking?

Dying, lass!