@Zyzle:
“unless of course you are a battered wife whose husband is told to take 'counselling' sessions from community leaders”
First of all domestic violence is not something that a Sharia court in the UK can provide any ruling on. If any domestic violence case reaches a Sharia court, it has probably already been handled through the regular courts, but the parties might also want a religious view and or help on it. Advising someone to take counselling sessions to prevent any future violence is not a bad thing.
However, I think you are talking about the following: “It has also emerged that tribunal courts have settled six cases of domestic violence between married couples, working in tandem with the police investigations... In the six cases of domestic violence, Mr Siddiqi said the judges ordered the husbands to take anger management classes and mentoring from community elders. There was no further punishment.”
This shows the lack of understanding you have regarding the Sharia courts in operation and also shows how the general media in the UK would like these courts to be portrayed. You didn’t pick up on the courts working in tandem with police investigations. If the police were involved and they saw the Sharia courts were working against the British law, they would have surely done something about it. But the only thing you chose to focus on was the punishment. That also highlights the area that many people are incredibly unsure about. So I’ll say this: “Sharia courts do not have powers to punish someone by throwing them in jail for life, or have them undergo physical punishment or anything of the like. That is because their powers are limited. They dealt with those cases as they were brought to them and they advised the parties to the limit of their powers. If you wanted them to punish the husbands, campaign to give them more powers. Are you going to do that anytime soon? Thought so.
“daughter who receives half as much inheritance after her parents death as her brothers”
Ah yes, the inheritance mystery. Apparently, the only time men get any money or property is from inheritance, which they are obliged, under Quranic/Sharia law, to spend on their familes i.e. their wife and children. The women however receive money when they get married and receive money from the inheritance, with no obligations to spend it on anyone, not their husband or kids or family. Infact, under Sharia no one is even allowed to ask the woman how uch she got and what she will do with it. So she gets money twice and no one has any say on what she does with it.
And that, apparently, is why men get more money as they are under obligation to first take care of their wife and children and then when possible the extended family, which may also include the mother and father of his wife. The husbands and or men dont get to spend the money on anything else and it is basically not theirs to keep.
“all legal and above board thanks to sharia courts and not something which would be allowed in a British court.”
If a man left a will stating that the exact same thing, it would have to be honoured by a British court. Heck, people have even left more assets to their pets than to their children in a number of cases. And all perfectly legal because it was a will.
“Another thing you have to answer is; why is our law not good enough for them? How do you see them being treated unfairly in our system?”
Sharia courts are part of your law. They are just utilising it as it was intended, namely a mediation service.
“Its also true however that these nations became deeply fundamentalist and inevitably crumbled.
Where are they now?”
Trying to crawl back to where they once were. However, its incredibly hard to do if your libraries and museums keep getting bombed, burned and destroyed throughout history. From the Mongols to the current Iraq war. Any knowledge they may have had has been destroyed by us. But I am a bit more optimistic about the future. Iran seems to be doing well in nanotechnological research. Indonesia and UAE and a host of others are getting their act together.
@tracer:
“Islam itself contributed nothing to this. Not a single one of these advances occurred because of any tenet of Islam. None of the Middle Eastern scientists or scholars worked on the things they did because of anything in the Koran. If anything, they did their science in spite of the word of the Koran.”
Totall bullshit. I’ll just give you one example: Ibn al-Haytham. Among the host of things he contributed to the progress of science and mankind, was the scientific method. Yes, thats right, the scientific method as we know it was introduced by a Muslim. But not just a regular Muslim, no, as Wiki says:
“Ibn al-Haytham was a devout Muslim... Ibn al-Haytham attributed his experimental scientific method and scientific skepticism to his Islamic faith... He also believed that human beings are inherently flawed and that only God is perfect. He reasoned that to discover the truth about nature, it is necessary to eliminate human opinion and error, and allow the universe to speak for itself. He wrote in his Doubts Concerning Ptolemy:
Truth is sought for its own sake ... Finding the truth is difficult, and the road to it is rough. For the truths are plunged in obscurity. ... God, however, has not preserved the scientist from error and has not safeguarded science from shortcomings and faults. If this had been the case, scientists would not have disagreed upon any point of science..
Therefore, the seeker after the truth is not one who studies the writings of the ancients and, following his natural disposition, puts his trust in them, but rather the one who suspects his faith in them and questions what he gathers from them, the one who submits to argument and demonstration, and not to the sayings of a human being whose nature is fraught with all kinds of imperfection and deficiency. Thus the duty of the man who investigates the writings of scientists, if learning the truth is his goal, is to make himself an enemy of all that he reads, and, applying his mind to the core and margins of its content, attack it from every side. He should also suspect himself as he performs his critical examination of it, so that he may avoid falling into either prejudice or leniency.
In The Winding Motion, Ibn al-Haytham further wrote that faith (or taqlid "imitation") should only apply to prophets of Islam and not to any other authorities, in the following comparison between the Islamic prophetic tradition and the demonstrative sciences:
From the statements made by the noble Shaykh, it is clear that he believes in Ptolemy's words in everything he says, without relying on a demonstration or calling on a proof, but by pure imitation (taqlid); that is how experts in the prophetic tradition have faith in Prophets, may the blessing of God be upon them. But it is not the way that mathematicians have faith in specialists in the demonstrative sciences.
Ibn al-Haytham described his search for truth and knowledge as a way of leading him closer to God:
I constantly sought knowledge and truth, and it became my belief that for gaining access to the effulgence and closeness to God, there is no better way than that of searching for truth and knowledge.”
Read all about him here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alhazen
The reason its called the Islamic Golden Age and these inventions and all the progress attributed to Islam is because at the same time as Islamic theocracies spawned forth the great scientists and scholars whose material and philosophy would usher in the Renaissance for the Western world, Christian theocracies were busy with.. well, you know what that age is called. It was the atmoshpere created by the Quranic and Islamic command to seek knowledge from the womb to the grave that drove these scientists. They followed the Islamic belief that to see God was to look around you and observe everything that was created, and use God’s gifts to keep seeking knowledge. And just like al-Haytham, there are numerous others with the same view.
@TW:[b]
“Well Adam, Christians behave somewhat differently from Muslims. Christians (especially in the UK) are generally pacifist in nature and are not actually actively campaigning to turn Britain into a hard-line state. If ANY other group (black, Jewish, Catholic, or any other minority) were to try such a thing we would be right to be alarmed about that too. But so far it's only the Muslims who appear to be trying it on. That's why Islam4UK has been banned and no Christian groups have so far fallen the same way. As for the real IRA, well that is political and outside the topic.”
The BNP wants to go back to Britain being ruled by the Bible. And there are numerous other groups that want us to go back to being ruled by the Bible. No different than Islam4Uk. And no, it wasnt banned because it was a violent group, I dont think at least, it was banned because it was saying things that could incite hatred. Like that totally retarded protest march, which was roundly denounced by British Muslims.
“No. If you change the group / religion / race, it becomes a different situation, the same comments could not apply, it would merely steer the discussion off topic.”
If you dont want to do it yourselves, just browse the RSTDT archives to see numerous similar statements about blacks and whatnot.
“As far as I can see, Christian fundies just like to bark and shout and show their stupidity. I haven't seen one suicide-bombing an airliner.”
You probably havent seen one bomb stuff either. Or kill immigrants. Or rape a young girl in Iraq then kill her and her family because its war time. Yes, Christian fundies have committed violence. Maybe not on the same scale in 1 attack in the US, but over time their killings surpass whatever happened on 9/11. And not to mention the Christian fundies fighting in Iraq; http://www.reasonproject.org/newsfeed/item/jesus_killed_mohammed/
If a fundie or terrorist kills even 1 person, that is bad enough. But we had a Christian fundie start a war against a country, with the help of his other Christian fundies. A war where a lot more people have died than in 9/11. No difference.
“Ponder this. If a Muslim woman is raped, she is judged to have committed adultery. She can then be stoned to death. In order to escape this judgement she has to provide FOUR reliable MALE witnesses to testify on her behalf.”
Those rape laws came into effect in the 70’s iirc, by Zia. They are not universally accepted and many Muslims have written against them as well. To understand what most Muslims see rape as, I suggest you read the following 2 links:
http://www.muhajabah.com/islamicblog/archives/veiled4allah/003000.php
http://www.law.wisc.edu/faculty/download.php?iID=175
Fortunately, in a lot of Muslim countries the laws are being examined and pressure is being exerted on the governments to repeal this crap that Zhia pushed on them.
“I am not bigoted against any group, but why should we not protect ourselves against an incoming threat?”
Because its not an incoming threat. Sharia courts in the UK hwill have no jurisdiction on punishing rapists or murderers. Thats like saying Jewish courts are a threat because the Torah (or was it the Talmud) allows a priest to have sex with 3 year olds. Which is BS because the Jewish courts have no such jurisdictions.
