F Rosa Rubicondior: Islam
Showing posts with label Islam. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Islam. Show all posts

Tuesday 1 November 2022

Religion Provides Excuses for People Who Need Excuses - Iranian Women's Protest

Iranian parliament
Photo: AP
Iran: protesters call for move to a non-religious state. What changes would that bring?

The closest things we have to the fundamentalist Christian dream of a fundamentalist theocracy, can be found in the Islamic world in states like Iran, Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan, where Sharia Law is little different to the Levitican Laws a Christian theocracy would impose on the rest of us. In fact, they have the same cultural roots in the tribal cultures of the Middle East, where religious superstition and the support of the priesthood was used to control and subjugate the population and, for the ruling men, the women.

Misogyny and a desire to control the females of the tribe probably originated in pre-human ancestors where biologically, there was an advantage in the males ensuring the children they supported were their own and not those of other males. Males would have been insecure in their ability to ensure fidelity, reinforced by their own tendency to 'spread their seed' as widely as possible, which required the women in the tribe to be unfaithful to their partners. The biological dynamics resulted in males being physically stronger than females and able to impose their control by force, if necessary.

Androcentric religions, such as the Abrahamic religions, evolved partly to codify this gender relationship and give it divine authority, to provide males with the excuses they needed to control and coerce females.
The insecure little men who control the Islamic Republic of Iran are continuing to use religion as their excuse for denying the women of Iran the right to choose what clothes to wear in public!

Imagine if this was reversed and women were telling men what to wear! The regime wouldn't last 5 minutes, and nor would any religion that supported it.

And yet, because their holy book, like the Bible before it, was written in a time when inadequate, insecure little men held the political and economic power, women were regarded as goods to be bought and sold, little different to slaves, the same holy book can be used as an excuse to treat women the same way today.

Just like the Catholic and most fundamentalist Protestant Christian churches, Islam is obsessed with sex. It assumes that if women are not rigidly controlled, they will go and seek out other men to have sex with, and if a women reveals more than just her eyes to any man other than her husband, it will provoke sinful sexual urges in the man which will condemn his 'soul' to an eternity of pain because the religion's god hates nothing more than a man lusting after a women to whom he isn't married.

But of course, that will be the woman's fault for tempting the man. The man can't be expected to see a woman's face, hair or legs and not want to have sex with her, and since it's her doing the tempting, anything that follows will be her fault too, consensual or not.

A couple of recent articles in The Conversation explain the importance of the women's demonstration against the compulsory wearing of the hijab in public and how fundamentalist Islam is merely the excuse for repression. They are reprinted under a Creative Commons license, reformatted for stylistic consistency.

Thursday 2 September 2021

Religious Hypocrisy News - Child Abuse Widespread in Most UK Religions

Inquiry report finds child sexual abuse in most major UK religions | IICSA Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse

As though to prove my point that religions provide excuses for people who need excuses, the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) has concluded that child sexual abuse was fequent in most major uK religions, and that the normal response to allegations was to defend the organization at the expense of their victims.

In a report released yesterday, they say:
Child sexual abuse has been found in most major UK religions… with some found to have no child protection policies in place at all.

The ‘Child protection in religious organisations and settings’ report examined evidence received from 38 religious organisations with a presence in England and Wales, with the figures provided to the Inquiry about known prevalence of child sexual abuse unlikely to reflect the full picture.

Religious organisations play a central and even dominant role in the lives of millions of children in England and Wales. The report highlights the blatant hypocrisy and moral failing of religions purporting to teach right from wrong and yet failing to prevent or respond to child sexual abuse.

Thursday 29 April 2021

Persecution News - The Doubt That Strikes Terror in the Heart of Religions.

Said Djabelkhir,
Algeria: quash the conviction of humanist academic Said Djabelkhir, Freethinker
Sentenced to 3 years in prison and a 50,000 Dinar fine.


Can you imagine a fundamental disagreement between two scientists over a basic principle in science resulting in the state locking up one of the scientists while supporters of the other called for his execution?

That's exactly what has happened in Algeria because of a fundamental disagreement in Islam.

Sunday 7 February 2021

Religion Declining Even in Former Devout Islamic and Catholic Countries

Middle East: Are people losing their religion? | Middle East| News and analysis of events in the Arab world | DW | 04.02.2021

The increasing rejection of religion which we have seen in most of the predominantly former Christian Western industrialised world since the mid 20th century, is now also being seen in the predominantly Moslem parts of the Middle East according to a poll conducted by the Arab Barometer, a research group based in Princeton University and the University of Michigan. The poll was the subject of a recent article in The Economist.

Coincident with, or maybe because of, this loss of faith, there is a corresponding fall in the trust of political parties and religious leaders who, in some countries are one and the same.

Saturday 23 January 2021

Creationist Fraud News - A Turkish Creationist Cult Leader Gets a 1074-Year Jail Sentence

The 64-year-old cult leader Adnan Oktar, who owned a TV channel, was arrested in 2018 along with 200 collaborators.
Credit: Anadolu Agency
Turkey court gives cult head Adnan Oktar over 1,000 years in jail

Anyone who spends much time debating creationism in online groups will be familiar with the followers of Adnan Oktar, aka Harun Yahya, a Turkish Moslem fundamentalist Creationist and purveyor of scientific disinformation on a par with Christian fundamentalists such as Kent Hovind, Ken Ham and Ray Comfort, only he is much richer and owns a TV channel.

He, unlike his Cristian counterparts (Hovid excepted), has now been sentenced by a Turkish court to over 1000 years in prison, though not, unfortunately for his crimes of lying to school children who are now taught Creationism in school and not the science of evolutionary biology, due it Oktar's political lobbying and influence.

Saturday 12 September 2020

Secularism Winning In Iran!

Source
Iran's secular shift: new survey reveals huge changes in religious beliefs

Until the moment of the Iranian revolution, the overthrow of the Shah, the installation of Ayatollah Khomeini and the establishment of a Shia Islamic theocracy in Iran in 1979, largely by young people, who then formed the fanatical backbone of the Revolutionary Guard, it had looked from the West as though post-war history was one of relentless retreat of religion and the inevitable advance of scientific secularism.

The Iranian revolution changed all that. Suddenly, the Islamic world had a new confidence and a new leadership and seemed to be embracing a regression to medieval religious fundamentalism. Something had gone wrong!

Or was this just a temporary reversal? How long would young people tolerate the state micromanaging their lives? How long would women tolerate the prohibition on their independence and their former right to dress in fashionable cloths, to date boys of their choice and the requirement, under pain of punishment by male 'modesty police' to cover themselves in dull, black, unflattering jijabs in public?

Incredibly, this Islamic fundamentalism was spreading and an increasing number of women were allowing themselves to be the possession of their husbands or the 'wards' of their father and brothers! Increasingly, especially in the West, an Islamic cultural identity required wearing the uniform of a Moslem at least in public in an assertive rejection of Western, materialist liberalism. So, how has resurgent fundamentalist Islam fared in its homeland in Iran? To find out, a group known as the Group for Analyzing and Measuring Attitudes in IRAN (GAMAAN) conducted an online survey with the collaboration of Ladan Boroumand, co-founder of the Abdorrahman Boroumand Center for Human Rights in Iran.

The result may be surprising!

Tuesday 14 July 2020

Civilising the Uncivilised with Humanism

Sudanese women campaigning for reforms
Sudan scraps apostasy law and alcohol ban for non-Muslims - BBC News

Good news that under Sudan's new 'reforming' Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok, Sudan is abolishing many of the old Islamic fundamentalist laws of the ousted former president, Omar al-Bashir, who was ousted by a coup following street protests. Sudan is now governed by a council which includes military officers who staged the coup.

What is striking is how the laws being abolished are being replaced by more humanitarian, even Humanist laws such as one might expect to find in a modernt civilised state.

Monday 22 June 2020

Covidiots - Covid-19 is Killing Fewer Non-Believers

Coronavirus (COVID-19) related deaths by religious group, England and Wales - Office for National Statistics

Despite all the promises that God will protect the righteous from Covid-19, and the forlorn hope that somehow it was going to kill off people with whom the self-righteous fundamentalists disagree, the facts are turning out to be something very different. Covid-19 is killing more religious people than non-believers, according to figures provided by the UK Office of National statistics.

The reasons for this are many and complex and probably more related ethnicity than to religion (and incidentally a reflection of how religion tends to be inherited with ethnicity rather than something arrived at after objective analysis of the evidence) but one thing is certain: there is no evidence that a deity is using the virus to punish non-believers or to reward believers in any one religion. Jews, Muslims and Christians are no safer for their piety whereas non-believers for a number of reasons are being statistically less affected by the virus.

Sunday 14 June 2020

Covidiots - Muslims For Covid-19

Ala Hazrat Dargah Islamic Seminary, Bareilly, Uttar Pradesh, India.
"Alcohol-based hand-cleanser is 'Haraam'"
Use of alcohol-based sanitizer in mosques sparks off debate among scholars- The New Indian Express

In another astonishing example of the danger religious superstition poses in a Covid-19-infected world, a Muslim cleric, Mufti Nashtar Farooqi, in Bareilly, Uttar Pradesh, India, has declared alcohol-based hand-cleanser 'haraam' (evil, banned) and therefore prohibited to Muslims. In particular they should not bring it into or use it in a mosque because it is ‘napaak’ (impure). He gets this from a passage in the Qur'an which forbids the drinking of alcoholic beverages - as though people drink the hand-cleanser - and his seminary, Ala Hazrat Dargah, has issued a fatwa against them

Covidiots - Another Faith Healer Dies

'Godman' Aslam who 'cured' by kissing hands, dies of coronavirus

In another reminder of the danger of religion and the stupidity it can encourage, an Indian Muslim 'Godman' or Aslam, who claimed to be able to cure Covid-19 with a kiss, has died in Madhya Pradesh’s Nayapura district or Ratlam. Amongst the people who visited him for his magical 'cure' 19 have now tested positive for the virus. The district of Ratlam has now become an Covid-19 hotspot.

29 Other faith healers offering similar magical cures, which includes drinking water the 'faith healer' has blown into, have now been put into government quarantine facilities while tests are carried out on them and their clients.

Monday 24 June 2019

Muslims Losing Faith Too

The Arab world in seven charts: Are Arabs turning their backs on religion? - BBC News

A major new survey by the Arab Barometer research network for the BBC, conducted across ten countries and the Palestinian territories between late 2018 and spring 2019 shows a marked increase in those with no religious beliefs.

Other finding in the survey show a move towards a more liberal attitude to a range of social issues.

Across the area, those self-identifying as "not religious" rose from just 8% to 13% between 2013 and 2018. This represents a 1% per annum increase. Amongst the under-30's this rose to 18%. The largest increases were seen in Tunisia, Libya, Morocco and Egypt, and only Yemen recorded a fall.

Saturday 27 October 2018

ECHR Ruling on 'Paedophile Prophet'

Conviction for calling Muhammad a paedophile is not in breach of Article 10 | ECHRPDF

On the face of it, the ruling yesterday by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) that the conviction of 'E.S.' by an Austrian court for 'disparaging religion' by suggesting that Muhammad had paedophile tendencies, should be upheld, is disturbing to say the least. However, it needs very careful scrutiny.

It does not, for example, as some are claiming, make it illegal to call Muhammad a paedophile. Nor does it give any special protection to Islam not available to other religions.

Sunday 24 June 2018

The Internet Apologists' Handbooks





Three new booklets by yours truly!

A humorous and provocative look at Internet fundamentalist apologetics. Most Internet apologists seem to know little of what they are promoting and nothing at all about what they are opposing and none of them seem to be able to understand basic ideas of probity, intellectual honesty, personal integrity or the difference between wishful thinking, assertions and actual evidence. Often, there seems to be a hidden agenda with very little evidence of an actual belief in the god being promoted, judging by the scant regard for anything by way of personal behaviour that the promoted religion teaches.


Saturday 12 May 2018

And So The 'Moderates' Enable The Extremists

On March 28th, the white march in honor of Mireille Knoll brought together thousands of people in Paris.
Credit: LP / Guillaume Georges
PressTV-Anti-Islam 'manifesto' sparks outrage in France

A letter signed by 300 French public figures, including ex-President Nicolas Sarkozy and three former prime ministers, calling on Islamic leaders to publicly reject the more violent passages in the Qur'an which call for the murder and punishment of Christians, Jews and non-believers, has been met with outrage by the very people who profess to condemn terrorism and proclaim it to be "pas a mon nom" (not in my name).

According to a report in Middle East Eye the letter entitled Manifesto "against the new anti-Semitism” published in Le Parisien, has been condemned as "Vile, racist, contemptible, Islamophobic, provocative..."

Saturday 25 November 2017

Another Faith-Based Massacre

The al-Rawda Sufi mosque, Bir al-Abed, Sinai, Egypt
Photo credit: EAP
Egypt attack: Gunmen kill 235 in Sinai mosque - BBC News

Islamic jihadists believed to be affiliated to Islamic State (IS) have attacked a Sufi mosque in Sinai, killing at least 300 people, now revised upwards from the BBC News report.

The reason? Because the Islamic tradition of Sufism is considered heretical by fundamentalist Sunni Muslims, so obviously those who believe they know the mind of Allah believe Allah wants heretics killed and needs their help to kill them.

Monday 25 September 2017

Women! For Pity's Sake Don't Drive!

Saudi Arabia's ban on women driving must remain because they ‘lack the intellect’ of men, says leading cleric | The Independent

Women should not be allowed to drive cars because, at the best of times, they have only half the intellect of men and, when they go shopping, this falls to only a quarter!

This comes on the authority of Saudi Arabian cleric and head of the Saudi government's religious edict authority in the southern province of Assir, Sheikh Saad al-Hajari.

Monday 5 June 2017

Islam is not the Problem. Faith is the Problem!

The grotesque random slaughter of innocent people, including young children, in the name of Islam, in Britain, France and Afghanistan by Muslim fanatics, and the equally grotesque murders of innocent Norwegians by the Christian fanatic, Anders Breivik a few years ago are the results not of Islam or Christianity; they are the result of faith.

They are the result of people arrogating for themselves the right to determine who can live and who should die, based on nothing but faith and the belief faith gives them certain knowledge of what a god wants, who it wants to punish - and that it requires their help in meting out that punishment.

It would be easy to condemn the deluded, simple-minded fools who carried out these acts as 'evil'; as representative of an inherently 'evil' religion or the products of inherently evil cultures, but that would be missing the point entirely.

The problem is not Islam; the problem is not Christianity. The problem is faith.

Saturday 28 January 2017

The Church of England 'Is Dying'!

Church of England is 'dying' and you should leave - Former chaplain to the Queen

After a few days away from blogging it is gratifying to be able to return to report signs of further disintegration of the Anglican Church. These became evident last week when the former chaplain to the Queen, Rev Dr Gavin Ashenden, resigned and urged others to leave the Church of England if they want to remain true Anglicans.

The Queen of England and Scotland is herself titular head of the Anglican Church so it's especially pleasing that her personal spiritual adviser is telling people they should leave her Church!

Monday 2 January 2017

Religious Persecution - Spain and Portugal Making Amends

Expulsion of Jews from Spain and Portugal following the Alhambra Decree, 1492.

Brexit vote sparks rush of British Jews seeking Portuguese passports | World news | The Guardian

News that large numbers of British Sephardic Jews are applying for Portuguese and Spanish citizenship in order to retain their citizenship of the European Union when Britain leaves has prompted me to look a little deeper into the historic background to this story.

Study of Spanish history is well worthwhile if you want to see how religion brutalises people and poisons communal relations. It's not the only example, of course, as examples can be found in the history of just about every European country but, outside the Balkans, Islam was not normally involved; inter-communal strife and bloodshed normally being confined to anti-Semitic Christians or different warring Christian sects. Spain managed all the blood-letting, persecution and hate perfectly well without Protestantism to provide an excuse.

Wednesday 7 September 2016

Shi'a And Sunni - As Different as Chalk And Chalk

'Iranians are not Muslims', says Saudi Arabia's Grand Mufti | The Independent

With the two major Middle Eastern Islamic powers, one, Iran being 95% Shi'a and the other, Saudi Arabia being 90% Sunni, indulging in a bitter war of words, it is worth looking at the history of the religious differences between these two branches of Islam.

The origin of this schism goes right back to the events following the death of Muhammad in Medina, Saudi Arabia in 632 CE. Muhammad himself had no male descendants, brothers or nephews so there was no clear line of succession and no rules of succession to be found in the Qur'an or Hadiths.

The early Muslim leadership, still centred on Medina, formed three different groupings; the first being the close associates of Muhammad who had made the hijra (the journey from Mecca into exile in Medina) with him; the later converts from amongst the leading families in Medina and the later still converts from Mecca. Whilst the first group regarded themselves as the natural successors to Muhammad and regarded the other two with suspicion as Johnny-come-latelies who had failed to support Muhammad in the early days.
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