Max Power
Not Rod Carey

Posts: 10,863
Joined: Oct 2008
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I Root For: NIU, Bradley
Location: Peoria
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RE: Study says Low IQ, more likely social conservative
(01-30-2012 12:45 PM)Hambone10 Wrote: Max.. You're not talking about religious law, but the people were talking about are... And clearly, the uk situations lean towards that. If you say it couldn't happen here, then why are you so up in arms about people who say that there are people who would like for it to happen here (there clearly are... See the Amish, Mormons, etc) and that they don't want it to. I was listening to the tv this morning talking about an honor killing either here or in Canada. That word is only defined in religious context and is meaningless under us law... So don't tell me someone won't argue that their religion lead them to do it, and that as a result, they shouldn't be tried. Now I agree with you that won't win... But is it entirely unimaginable that at some point it could? Who would have thought 50 years ago we would have people refusing treatment on religious grounds or having assisted suicides. Very little is impossible.
Second, if they wanted to ban being gay, they would have said so. The bible doesn't just talk about sodomy, but about man laying with man. It would have been easy... In 1500 and 1860, by your own admission, they weren't really worried about offending gays... They would have just said being gay was against the law. They didn't. Not because they were trying to be gay friendly... But because they were REALLY interested in controlling morality... Regardless of the participants. I don't deny that it has the effect of banning being gay, but the intent was clearly to do more than that.
In a thread where you are accusing people of over-reacting, I think you are clearly doing the same. Especially when you add in people responding to questions posed of them... Hey newt, what do you think about the uk where sharia law is being used to settle disputes... Well, I think it is bad and don't want it to happen here... And then the headline is... Newt thinks sharia law coming here!! I think they both even implied as I said that it was currently far fetched..
I'm not saying there aren't Muslims who would like to live under Sharia law or even impose it on us. They can't do it though. I'm up in arms because this anti-Sharia law talk is part of a larger Islamophobic movement to breed hate. It's similar to the hysteria in the 19th century over Jewish religious law.
Yes, it is entirely unimaginable that it could. For a religious honor killing to be legal you would need to change the criminal code in that state.
Sodomy encompasses being gay. Specific anti-gay laws would be unnecessarily duplicative because sodomy covers it. Your original statement was that liberals were hysterical to suggest that conservatives want to criminalize being gay. Well, that's what anti-sodomy laws, which conservatives fought to protect, were for, among other things.
Newt did not simply say Sharia was a bad idea. Here's what he said:
"Shariah is a mortal threat to the survival of freedom in the United States and in the world as we know it."
Yes, I would call that hysteria, and promoting hate and hysteria.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/03/opinio...erica.html
Quote:MORE than a dozen American states are considering outlawing aspects of Shariah law. Some of these efforts would curtail Muslims from settling disputes over dietary laws and marriage through religious arbitration, while others would go even further in stigmatizing Islamic life: a bill recently passed by the Tennessee General Assembly equates Shariah with a set of rules that promote “the destruction of the national existence of the United States.”
Supporters of these bills contend that such measures are needed to protect the country against homegrown terrorism and safeguard its Judeo-Christian values. The Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich has said that “Shariah is a mortal threat to the survival of freedom in the United States and in the world as we know it.”
This is exactly wrong. The crusade against Shariah undermines American democracy, ignores our country’s successful history of religious tolerance and assimilation, and creates a dangerous divide between America and its fastest-growing religious minority.
The suggestion that Shariah threatens American security is disturbingly reminiscent of the accusation, in 19th-century Europe, that Jewish religious law was seditious. In 1807, Napoleon convened an assembly of rabbinic authorities to address the question of whether Jewish law prevented Jews from being loyal citizens of the republic. (They said that it did not.)
Fear that Jewish law bred disloyalty was not limited to political elites; leading European philosophers also entertained the idea. Kant argued that the particularistic nature of “Jewish legislation” made Jews “hostile to all other peoples.” And Hegel contended that Jewish dietary rules and other Mosaic laws barred Jews from identifying with their fellow Prussians and called into question their ability to be civil servants.
The German philosopher Bruno Bauer offered Jews a bargain: renounce Jewish law and be granted full legal rights. He insisted that, otherwise, laws prohibiting work on the Sabbath made it impossible for Jews to be true citizens. (Bauer conveniently ignored the fact that many fully observant Jews violated the Sabbath to fight in the Prussian wars against Napoleon.)
During that era, Christianity was seen as either a universally valid basis of the state or a faith that harmoniously coexisted with the secular law of the land. Conversely, Judaism was seen as a competing legal system — making Jews at best an unassimilable minority, at worst a fifth column. It was not until the late 19th century that all Jews were granted full citizenship in Western Europe (and even then it was short lived).
Most Americans today would be appalled if Muslims suffered from legally sanctioned discrimination as Jews once did in Europe. Still, there are signs that many Americans view Muslims in this country as disloyal. A recent Gallup poll found that only 56 percent of Protestants think that Muslims are loyal Americans.
This suspicion and mistrust is no doubt fueled by the notion that American Muslims are akin to certain extreme Muslim groups in the Middle East and in Europe. But American Muslims are a different story. They are natural candidates for assimilation. They are demographically the youngest religious group in America, and most of their parents don’t even come from the Middle East (the majority have roots in Southeast Asia). A recent Pew Research Center poll found that Muslim Americans exhibit the highest level of integration among major American religious groups, expressing greater degrees of tolerance toward people of other faiths than do Protestants, Catholics or Jews.
Given time, American Muslims, like all other religious minorities before them, will adjust their legal and theological traditions, if necessary, to accord with American values.
America’s exceptionalism has always been its ability to transform itself — economically, culturally and religiously. In the 20th century, we thrived by promoting a Judeo-Christian ethic, respecting differences and accentuating commonalities among Jews, Catholics and Protestants. Today, we need an Abrahamic ethic that welcomes Islam into the religious tapestry of American life.
Anti-Shariah legislation fosters a hostile environment that will stymie the growth of America’s tolerant strand of Islam. The continuation of America’s pluralistic religious tradition depends on the ability to distinguish between punishing groups that support terror and blaming terrorist activities on a faith that represents roughly a quarter of the world’s population.
Eliyahu Stern, an assistant professor of religious studies and history at Yale, is the author of the forthcoming “The Genius: Elijah of Vilna and the Making of Modern Judaism.”
(This post was last modified: 01-30-2012 02:42 PM by Max Power.)
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