Quote:
Originally Posted by WT Sharpe
Very good point: it's all for the good of women.
Which is why in so many Islamic countries, women who don't dress modestly are publicly flogged.
|
They are publicly flogged because their actions are seen as detrimental to the society in which they live.
Whenever people live together in groups, there must be agreement on what constitutes acceptable behavior. We call the agreement "morals". We call the written down version "laws". But regardless, the agreement must exist for the society to survive.
Hammurabi became famous for his laws, and I think the key point was he
wrote them down. Hammurabi ruled Babylonia, and his capital was a major center for trade among the civilizations of the known world. Chances were very good not everyone who came and traded there had the same customs or rules, so Hammurabi put his in writing, so everyone knew how the game was played there, and a common set of standards governed behavior.
But all such rules evolve to aid the survival of the
society. The individual is unimportant. Behave in ways your society does not approve of, and actions will be taken against you. Societies may have different things they disapprove of, and different actions that will be taken if you break the rules, but the rules and the actions will always exist.
Quote:
|
But not to single out Islam. Someone once said that the only reason modern Muslims are more dangerous than modern Christians is because they still believe their religion; and given the superior firepower of modern Christendom and it's often over-eagerness to display that might, I'm not so sure Islam is more dangerous. We've got some pretty whacked-out hotheads in our own churches right here in the States!
|
There are enough Christians who are still True Believers.
But I think you have to examine culture as well. For instance, what if Mohammad had been born a Teuton in what is now Germany instead of an Arab in the middle east. Do you suppose Islam would look anything like it does now? I don't - culture shapes religion, and the underlying cultures are very different.
(And Mohammad, as I understand it, began as a Christian, and originally saw himself as someone attempting to reform Christianity. When the Christians didn't listen, he formed his own religion. There were immense schisms in Christianity at the time between the Orthodox and those who were seen as Monophysite heretics, and a good deal of strife and violence based on the divisions. I believe a lot of the Monophysites converted willingly to Islam, as Islam's tenets were a lot closer to what they believed about God than those of Orthodox Christianity of the time. The Monophysites saw the Arab conquerors as liberators freeing them from the oppression of the Orthodox.)
______
Dennis