HIDE THE SECRET. HIDE THE WEAKNESS
Islam is not a monolith, but billions of individuals, though it may be a constraint on individuality, for instance where the death penalty for apostasy is noted. Even the most theologically constrained will represent millions of different views on health care, air pollution, agriculture, climate change, building regulations and all the rest of the nuts and bolts of life. All nations that proclaim themselves as Islamic do not have the same laws
In particular:
The Qur'an does not mention the act of stoning (Rajm) for any crime.
Contrary to popular belief, the punishment for Adultery (Zina) in the Quran is not stoning to death but flogging with a 100 lashes (if the accuser can provide 4 witnesses to the act). If the accuser cannot produce 4 witnesses, he himself will be punished by flogging with 80 lashes.
"The woman and the man guilty of fornication/adultery,- flog each of them with a hundred stripes: Let not compassion move you in their case, in a matter prescribed by Allah, if ye believe in Allah and the Last Day: and let a party of the Believers witness their punishment."
— Qur'an, Sura 24 (An-Nur), ayat 2[14]
"And those who accuse chaste women then do not bring four witnesses, flog them, (giving) eighty stripes, and do not admit any evidence from them ever; and these it is that are the transgressors. Except those who repent after this and act aright, for surely Allah is Forgiving, Merciful."
— Qur'an, Sura 24 (An-Nur), ayat 4-5[15]
Wasn’t that interesting. Stoning is of course Middle Eastern.
PANTHER -> Site news -> Stoning: Deuteronomy is most explicit
by Ysabel Howard - Friday, 4 February 2011, 01:49 AM
And this and what follows...
Chapter 22
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13 If any man take a wife, and go in unto her, and hate her,
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14 And give occasions of speech against her, and bring up an evil name upon her, and say, I took this woman, and when I came to her, I found her not a maid:
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15 Then shall the father of the damsel, and her mother, take and bring forth the tokens of the damsel's virginity unto the elders of the city in the gate:
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16 And the damsel's father shall say unto the elders, I gave my daughter unto this man to wife, and he hateth her;
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17 And, lo, he hath given occasions of speech against her, saying, I found not thy daughter a maid; and yet these are the tokens of my daughter's virginity. And they shall spread the cloth before the elders of the city.
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18 And the elders of that city shall take that man and chastise him;
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19 And they shall amerce him in an hundred shekels of silver, and give them unto the father of the damsel, because he hath brought up an evil name upon a virgin of Israel: and she shall be his wife; he may not put her away all his days.
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20 But if this thing be true, and the tokens of virginity be not found for the damsel:
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21 Then they shall bring out the damsel to the door of her father's house, and the men of her city shall stone her with stones that she die: because she hath wrought folly in Israel, to play the whore in her father's house: so shalt thou put evil away from among you.
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22 If a man be found lying with a woman married to an husband, then they shall both of them die, both the man that lay with the woman, and the woman: so shalt thou put away evil from Israel.
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23 If a damsel that is a virgin be betrothed unto an husband, and a man find her in the city, and lie with her;
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24 Then ye shall bring them both out unto the gate of that city, and ye shall stone them with stones that they die; the damsel, because she cried not, being in the city; and the man, because he hath humbled his neighbor's wife: so thou shalt put away evil from among you.
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25 But if a man find a betrothed damsel in the field, and the man force her, and lie with her: then the man only that lay with her shall die.
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26 But unto the damsel thou shalt do nothing; there is in the damsel no sin worthy of death: for as when a man riseth against his neighbor, and slayeth him, even so is this matter:
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27 For he found her in the field, and the betrothed damsel cried, and there was none to save her.
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28 If a man find a damsel that is a virgin, which is not betrothed, and lay hold on her, and lie with her, and they be found;
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29 Then the man that lay with her shall give unto the damsel's father fifty shekels of silver, and she shall be his wife; because he hath humbled her, he may not put her away all his days.
Edit | Delete
See this post in context
There is only one reason this particular bit of the Bible never caught on in the West.
John 8
1 Jesus went unto the mount of Olives.
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2 And early in the morning he came again into the temple, and all the people came unto him; and he sat down, and taught them.
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3 And the scribes and Pharisees brought unto him a woman taken in adultery; and when they had set her in the midst,
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4 They say unto him, Master, this woman was taken in adultery, in the very act.
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5 Now Moses in the law commanded us, that such should be stoned: but what sayest thou?
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6 This they said, tempting him, that they might have to accuse him. But Jesus stooped down, and with his finger wrote on the ground, as though he heard them not.
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7 So when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself, and said unto them, He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.
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8 And again he stooped down, and wrote on the ground.
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9 And they which heard it, being convicted by their own conscience, went out one by one, beginning at the eldest, even unto the last: and Jesus was left alone, and the woman standing in the midst.
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10 When Jesus had lifted up himself, and saw none but the woman, he said unto her, Woman, where are those thine accusers? hath no man condemned thee?
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11 She said, No man, Lord. And Jesus said unto her, Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more.
About which may be said that at least the accusers were capable of honesty and considering whether they were truly sinless. I somehow don’t think it would work in Iran.
It can – probably/possibly - be said that the rights of any individual woman depend as much if not more on her home and her community as on her wider society, whether she is encouraged to be educated.
So what is wrong with Islam? It is somewhere, exactly like Marxism, where love is not at the core. Somewhere, like Marxism, where there is a black hole, a bottomless pit of eternal night. You may know it as the Gulag Archipelago. When that pit is entered, it is bottomless, as of course it was for the Nazis, because there is no small voice squeaking Love. Islam has produced art, literature far superior to those produced by the Soviet Union, not being a materialist culture. To go culture-vultureing to Moscow is indeed to see cultural treasures – created under the tsars. For centuries Muslim scholars have argued over Islam, as Marxists over Marx. Only there is that space in which there is neither love nor mind, nor therefore human, a space where monsters can flourish.
Yes of course I understand what they fail to express when they say atheism is the core of evil, the cause of Stalinism and Nazism, only because they have cunt-for-brains they do not understand that love is independent of any profession of Christian faith. What they mean is Stalinism, Nazism are loveless.
This could probably usefully be inscribed on any religious institution of any flavour, since it makes no mention of Jesus.
1Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. 2And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing.
1 Corinthians
When I say talk to us as if we are ignorant peasants, little children lapping it all up, I think particularly of Murphy O’Connor dribbling that the absence of faith is the greatest of all evils. That’s not what it says in the Bible, Cardinal…Quite simply none of them expects us to be capable of examining equally other sources of information.
It has of course long been the case that to the Catholic Church Christianity is whatever it says it is. Something of a difference of opinion over that. It is no accident the Reformation followed the invention of printing.
The correct word for any torturer, any stoner, any creature suffused with hate who sets upon his or her child or sister is not holy, devout, sincere. It is psychopath, creature from whom all love is absent, consumed by self, incapable of seeing another as distinct from its self.
You are perfectly at liberty to call Jesus a shit and indeed he could be distinctly rude. However, you will find it quite hard going to prove it, since our definitions of non-shittiness are largely derived from his teachings: by the time you have contemplated those blasted motes and beams, judged not that ye be not judged, let your yea be yea and your nay be nay, spake openly, and loved your neighbour as yourself, with bonus points for loving your enemy and praying for them who despitefully use you, you are being decidedly non-shitty, though you may also be dead, since your enemies will not necessarily have the courtesy to appreciate you.
They did, they did, form our ideas of non-shittiness, until the Trots took hold and started to teach self-obsession instead, you are far too perfect to be criticized, of course others aren’t equal in rights.
PANTHER -> Site news -> Repost: So some guys had this really freaky idea that everyone should love one another...
by Ysabel Howard - Friday, 4 February 2011, 12:50 AM
Oh and this:
Galatians 5:14 For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this; Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself
I do not strike myself as the first person whose thought tends to the direction that the idea is greater than the dogma - and that love trumps all other commandments. If there is no love, it goes.
37 Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.
38 This is the first and great commandment.
39 And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
40 On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.
Mark 12:30 And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment.
31 And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these.
Some part of that is hard to understand? It may often be hard to do, but to understand? Love thy neighbour, thy black neighbour, thy white neighbour, thy brown neighbour, thy gay neighbour, thy female neighbour, thy rich neighbour, thy poor neighbour, even, even...thy evolutionary biologist neighbour. (Dawkins in The God Delusion argues that loving thy neighbour meant loving thy fellow Jew, not what we think it to mean, but I think he's wrong, as below*, and in any case it's what we think it means that has shaped western society.) *Leviticus 19:34 But the stranger that dwelleth with you shall be unto you as one born among you, and thou shalt love him as thyself; for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God.
As thy self. Not more than. Not less than. Skip two thousand years or so and you get to a society of which it is the foundation. I'm not saying we're good at it.
Historically, obviously, notoriously, Christian leaderships have had enormous problems with it and still do, such that it required a couple of revolutions and a secular framework.
Historically, obviously, famously, many Christians have not.
Because of the historical, obvious and notorious, there is an ambiguity over women and gays not shared by the majority of us, an unwillingness to insist we really matter. After all it's in the Bible and the Qu'ran that we don't as much as perfect heterosexual male selves, different rules apply.
There is no reason why anyone should have to accept the totality of these books because in their time they were accepted as the Word of God and there has been an unpleasant insistence that they must be for the whole of time.
Let us suppose that the CofE started (ridiculous thought!) to uphold Christianity and preached that we should love God and our neighbour. This does not entail accepting Jesus as the Son of God, so who is going to have a problem with it? Atheists would find the first part kooky, perhaps intellectually objectionable, but we can hardly find it morally objectionable because of the second part: what this god they are saying people should believe in wants you to do is love everyone. (Whoops, there I go forgetting the holy have a monopoly on 'morally objectionable').
Who is going to have major, major problems with loving all neighbours as their selves is a little obvious.
Thus the clergy move the goal-posts. What is wrong with us and there has to be something wrong with us since we do not all flock each Sunday to fill the pews and there cannot be anything wrong with them, is not that we do not love but we do not have faith.
There is deliberate obfuscation between faith and morality or in other words faith and love, the nasty nonsense that one is in some way morally defective if one does not believe in God. Believe me, o men of God, it does not go down well with harmless necessary atheists who do their best to treat everyone well to have you chaps sneering that we have no proper foundation for moral behaviour and are inferior to those who behave like skunks.
Just what was Cantuar getting at in his objection to the notion of belief as a matter of choice?
There is a lot of fluff in this arena. Let me try to blow some of it away.
Belief in a deity is morally and indeed intellectually neutral. It says nothing about the nature of the god and so either what it wants you to do or if it actually wants you to do anything and the existence of some form of being or mind called 'God' can't be disproved.
This being so, people have variously thought their god wanted a society underpinned by slavery or a society in which slavery had been abolished.
What I think the Archbishop was evading saying is the view that if your holy book tells you to mistreat other people, then you have to do it, you can't see how you can't do it.
Except millions of other people manage. Except that is the mind-set of the drones of the Chinese Communist Party and the Nazi Party. Befehl' sind Befehl'. This 'faith' he vaunts is thus an excuse for the closure of debate. One mustn't criticize the behaviour of the religious because they have no choice over it. Nasty, isn't it.
Galatians 3:23 But before faith came, we were kept under the law, shut up unto the faith which should afterwards be revealed. 24 Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith. 25 But after that faith is come, we are no longer under a schoolmaster. 26 For ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus. 27 For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ. 28 There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus. 29 And if ye be Christ's, then are ye Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise.
Do you think you could bring yourselves, guys, to tell the country the stuff in the New Testament. It’s not a question of converting anyone, it’s just a question of making clear where you stand, what you believe, if you believe it.
DITCHING THE THEOLOGY OF LOVE
Of those who know anything about these things, it may I think be said we know what Jesus taught, and we know what Buddha taught. We are more familiar with the Noble Eightfold Path than with the Old Testament - and all the dribble about 'Abrahamic faiths' connects nowhere.
So we'll just side-line Jesus, right, guys? More formally, what is being ditched is the theology of love, which probably most people would think the heart of Christianity. After all, Jesus thought it the heart of his teaching.
'God is love' is an abstract proposition not susceptible of literal interpretation. It was also central to the CofE's summary of what it means to be a Christian - until they changed the Website. Assuming they have not abandoned this pernicious concept entirely, it is not wholly far-fetched to expect the CofE to uphold it..
Nor, for that matter, is it far-fetched, post Sprong and Honest to God, to expect it to be able to speak to people about concepts of God that do not relate to an old guy in the sky. That any suggestion that there weren't wise men, shepherds and so on causes those who regard themselves as the backbone of Anglicanism to come out in hives and the ABC to be accused of atheism is actually not another matter.
7 Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God.
8 He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.
9 In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him.
10 Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another.
12 No man hath seen God at any time. If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us.
13 Hereby know we that we dwell in him, and he in us, because he hath given us of his Spirit.
14 And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world.
15 Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwelleth in him, and he in God.
16 And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him.
17 Herein is our love made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment: because as he is, so are we in this world.
18 There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love.
19 We love him, because he first loved us.
20 If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?
21 And this commandment have we from him, That he who loveth God love his brother also
1 John 4
Somewhat inflammatory, right, some Muslims wouldn’t like it. Filth monkeys who hate love, hate mind, creatures rotten inside who understand only power. Love and mind threaten that power. Threaten it from within. Being given flowers never halted pigs beating up hippies or any other bunch of cunts, but if they start to love, start to think, that threatens the fragile screaming self.
Many Muslim parents love their daughters, whatever transgressions they have committed. They love the sinner and hate the sin. The problem is the few who don't.
Were I ever to have the misfortune to met ‘Sir’ Iqbal Sacranie, I should say something of the following. No, you stupid cunts, it is not your bloody race, it is that you personally, individually, are disgusting pieces of shit, and if that indeed is your bloody religion, then your bloody religion is a disgusting piece of shit, animals setting on one man because they can’t cope with words, a filthy animal mob setting on one man who would have torn him apart had they been able to get to him, one defenceless unarmed man, have you no honour at all, animals setting on one man worth 50 times what they are, being intelligent, thoughtful, decent, unmurderous, but who simply expects as do we all to be regarded as equal in rights. Despicable animals, nothing fouler than a mob. Animals who think words are rightly met by violence – fine, put bullets in your sick animal brains. See if you can tell the difference then. Traitors taking their cue from the head of a hostile fascist foreign power, attempting to impose the norms of that power on the free world, in which all are equal in rights. Psychopaths to whom self is all, insolently contemptuous of the sovereign liberty of the individual. Vermin. Why do you think you own Rushdie’s mind, his body? Why do you think he is your fucking slave to do or be only what you permit or be murdered? It’s a book. There are millions of books. The bloody Qu’ran contains disgusting sentiments. Fine, we burn it, ban it. You make no bloody sense. I suppose you are very stupid as well as being very evil. You are in the free world. If you want to behave as though you are in Iran, fuck off there. Your filthy death-cult is not wanted.
Is that enough? Should I make it more forceful? Who recommended that cunt for a knighthood?
THE WITHDRAWAL OF LOVE AND FORCING ONESELF ON OTHERS
The free world is the consequence of the teachings of Jesus: liberty is a function of love; control is a function of self-will. The level on which it all fits together is not only accessible to atheists, but acceptable to atheists; God is not a necessary precursor. Then again, if we want to keep it simple, religion is two things, from one of which follows liberty and from the other fascism.
You are not self-forgetting by definition if you are forcing others to obey you. Grace is paramountly not forcing oneself on others other than to restrain them from forcing themselves on others. To love one's neighbour as oneself is not to inflict beliefs he or she finds questionable on him or her. People are and have to be free to go wherever they might be going. Society's business is limited to demanding they behave tolerably to each other and ensuring they are free to travel. We do not know.
Let us assume Jesus existed. It is questioned, but let us assume there was a man with a life and an agenda. It is frankly evident from the story of that foreshortened life that neither cowardice nor the withdrawal of love, the forcing of his will on others, was part of that agenda. I have mused upon how Jesus would have been expected to behave before Pilate under the current dispensation. What he did not do was begin to babble, retract, recant, plead, beg for mercy. Doubtless he would also have kept his marf shut if he knew what was good for 'im. The notion that he may not propagate his views lest he upset Authority is markedly absent from his ministry. I mean, you just don't do that, tell them they're whited sepulchres and that, you just don't do it. Nor of course do you lose your temper and start throwing tables around. No-o-o, I don't think he was the Son of God, just refreshingly normal.
Love and how far if at all it may be withdrawn is at the heart of all freedom, all women's and gay rights, despite the sleaze and corruption of priests that these represent modern corruptions - only, darlings because you are desperately sick - all human rights, and perhaps particularly prisoners' rights, which is among many other things why the devout Catholic Frank Pakenham,7th Earl of Longford, who undoubtedly could have had an extremely pleasant life far distant from society's rejects, was a founding member of New Bridge, an organization dedicated to keeping prisoners in touch with the outside world and integrating them back into it. This was in 1956, some ten years before the Moors murders, some 20 years before he became embroiled in the issue of the repentance or otherwise of Hindley.
We do not need lectures on the good religious people do. We need frank acknowledgement of the evil they do.
The withdrawal of love consists in - look it up - those of us who can still read are able to read Fowler - how far one may treat another as if he or she were one's property, an object with neither will nor thoughts nor feelings of his - or of course her - own, no personality, no individuality, no being of his - or of course her - own, no regard for another as distinct, separate, equal, different, but only as an extension of oneself, at one's disposal for the fulfilment of one's desires, no matter how depraved those desires be, the sorry perverted justification being that since one has asserted independence of being, one is evil and thus anything may be done to one.
Such withdrawal extends centrally to the treatment of prisoners and torture and degradation thereof. One may not either crudely physically torture or attempt humiliation for instance by ordering another to walk around fully dressed from the waist up but naked from the waist down.
One may only regard another as a creature of one's own will to the extent of forcing one's will on him or her if he or she has first forced his or her will on another. Thus underpinned is the principle of initiation of force, wherein force may only be used against those who have initiated it, amazingly enough. Thus someone may only be deprived of his or her liberty if he or she is proven beyond reasonable doubt of an offence against the will and integrity of another, whether by criminal assault or by depriving of goods.
Thus the refusal to withdraw love meant there could be no burnings at the stake, no Spanish Inquisition.
To deny a women any role for which she holds the appropriate qualifications and the desire to fulfil, whether lorry-driver, stockbroker or priest, is to force one's self on her, to overcome and negate her individuality, to make the claim that you know what she is and of what she is capable because she has breasts and a vagina, to mentally rape her, rape her soul
It is, I trust, unthinkable that any Anglican would insist that John Sentamu and Michael Nazir-Ali are unfitted to be bishops of the Church of England by virtue of their race, let alone try to split the Church of England over it. It is, I trust, unthinkable that the sensibilities of some Nazi freak be pandered to in this respect. There is that which is non-negotiable. Women most evidently still do not fit in this category in some religious circles.
The superficial and rather pathetic justification for this is presumably that there is Scriptural authority for the nature of women and gays, as of course there is Scriptural authority for banning prawn cocktail as an abomination and eliminating ferrets, but not similar authority for racism. That has not been the view of supposedly Christian racists. The geocentric, androcentric view that the nature of the cosmos or as they would have it the creation is defined by the male human ape-descendants on the third planet from the sun is merely silly.
One is not loving, self-forgetting if one is forcing one's miserable self on another, demanding he or she obey one. One is an ego-maniac, one's sole concern the yammerings of one's self.
The corrupt self-appointed voices of God, in the case of Christianity of course in direct opposition to that God, have claimed and continue to claim that whatever withdrawal of love they choose to inflict is unchallengeable because it is God's Will. They may parrot about choice but within their disturbed minds the mere belief one may choose defines one as evil. Thus a vocabulary was developed of words of power to terrorize the faithful, 'heretic', 'blasphemer', 'apostate', meaning one insists one is a person in one's own right.
The excrement that whatever the twisted self-will of a clerical person desires is necessarily sanctioned by God was of course overturned by the Enlightenment, neither love nor reason having moved the priesthood to treat others as individuals and equals.
In place of we know that, it is evident that, came you know nothing of the kind and it is a piece of twisted untenable nonsense for which you have no evidence that.
Most notably in the case of women's university education, nor were the learned gentlemen prepared to obtain any evidence. One would have thought that those so confident of the innate intellectual inferiority of the female of the species would have admitted us to the universities as an experiment, in the confident expectation we should fail.
Thus it took the Enlightenment and secularism to overthrow the arbitrary and unchallengeable power of the mentally sick,for whom 'sin' lay in having a personality of one's own, a being of one's own, individuality, a will of one's own, I have noted elsewhere the perversion that self-will lies not in forcing one's will on another but in having a will of one's own and forcing it on no-one.
The horror the Enlightenment evokes in the fascist religious is not its disbelief, but its threat to power. In place of their power called the Will of God, by definition unaccountable and indeed silent, came the will of men who could be questioned, dismissed from office.
Instead of the governed being accountable to the imaginary master in the sky it was the governing who became accountable. Small wonder they hate and were loathe to surrender.
Thus when we talk of a secular society we are talking not of values, not of the abolition of the transcendent, but of the transfer of power, of power over fallible men and women being in the hands of equally fallible men and women who may be questioned, repudiated, dislodged, who have their power given to them by those they govern and who may equally have that power removed. When we talk of removing religion from society we are not, if we have any sense at least (both sides fudge this] talking of silencing religious individuals, but of the demand power be answerable and that those who possess it may be mistaken, stupid or criminal. No-one has power over another because he or she says he does or says his or her god says he or she does.
This they wish to overthrow and so conspire so to do with the disgraceful drool they spout.
Thus Murphy O'Connor with his perversion that it is faith that takes us beyond our limited selves, when evidently faith does nothing of the kind. Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, described a lack of faith as “the greatest of evils” and blamed atheism for war and destruction, implying that it was a greater evil even than sin itself.
This of course directly contradicts 1 Corinthians 13:
1Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. 2And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing.
3And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing.
4Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up,
5Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil;
6Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth;
7Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.
8Charity never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away.
9For we know in part, and we prophesy in part.
10But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away.
11When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.
12For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.
13And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.
It is love that takes us beyond our limited selves.
However, if we attempt to explore how this faith takes us beyond our limited selves, we might consider he who is carefully incarcerating the still living but shortly to be less so body of a terrified woman in what is to be her open grave. He has no doubt concerning the right of his purpose. He is the tool of God's will! God requires him, The Great Almighty Alpha Baboon in the Sky, Yahweh-Allah-Jehovah, has a use for him. Not of course that he actually becomes God but it's like being transcended, he the least of Allah's slaves has a chance to serve his master. He has no, he can have no sense of responsibility for his actions, he is transcended, God is all.
No great intelligence is required to work out that what allows such evils in Muslim nations is that no-one kicks the shit out of their ethos, but that of course in no way deters the Blairs, the Warsis, the Blunketts, the Williamses, the Murphy O'Connors from condemning and attempting to turn the full majesty of the law upon those of us who kick the shit out of that ethos here.
If we look further at what this faith is it is often as not a pretence at self-surrender, a pretence at putting one's trust, one's life in the hands of God, while the little monkey brain continues to yammer and manipulate reality, trusting God that whatever one has told oneself God wants shall come to pass or more innocently that Gran won't die. There is faith that God exists, faith that God cares, and faith that God cares particularly about me because I'm a good Christian/Jew/Muslim/Whatever. This last was a particularly sour note in the Midnight Mass broadcast last Christmas Eve; the music was good, pity about the words.
And of course there is that cornerstone of observance, seedy sycophantic litanies about how squalid we are and how great is God. That most of us are a bit squalid, some of us are definitely squalid and some of us are very squalid was not a condition rectified in the vast proportion of human history when power was in the hands of the religious authorities, particularly if one were poor and/or female. This is no way detracts from the efforts of individual religious people who worked to make lives that bit better. I do but invoke reality. To listen to them one could quite believe and perhaps if one is sufficiently ill-educated one does believe that the first 1700 years of Christian history represented paradise lost.
It could, I suppose, be argued that Murphy O'Connor's speech on that occasion was merely representative of a binge of self-congratulation amongst those who Believe. It could be argued to stretch a point that the Church is unwilling to say anything other than 'We love faith' lest harm come from it to Catholics in Muslim nations, all that frightful secularism, you understand, which means that pervs are not free to injure either Muslims in Christian countries or Christians in Muslim ones. What it looked like was a grotesquely ludicrous attack on Richard Dawkins and the rest of the 33% of the nation who count ourselves atheist. We are evil, you understand. Atheists are evil. Faith is wonderful (unless you happen to be being stoned to death at the time) and atheists are evil. Yes, of course there are evil atheists. The difference is we acknowledge it. The 'four-legs-good, two-legs bad' level of mentation hardly becomes faith and reason hand in hand.
But given that His Eminence is content to hurl around the e-word, the religious can scarcely object when a neat drop-shot bats it back to their side of the net. It doesn't work like that? But how funny.
If we consider the great minds of the past, anyone from Plato to Ibn Arabi to Lao-Tze to Caesar, we shall not instantly think that the heights of human intelligence have increased dramatically in the last 150 years but rather that only when rational people had shaken free of religious authorities was medicine able to develop; there would not seem to be an intrinsic reason why modern medicine could not have developed many hundreds of years earlier. Ancient Greek and Classical Arab alike were profoundly interested in medicine. Thus at the door of theocracy, dogma and superstition may be laid centuries of avoidable death and suffering.
A cruel and unusual punishment for those who insist that all truth is contained in their pet book, to which all other books, all other versions of the world, are subordinate would be to deprive them of the major fruits of liberty, these being science, medicine and the freedom to practise their beastly little creed, for assuredly without freedom of thought and speech there is no right to be anything other than an Anglican, not a Marxist, not a Muslim, not a Seventh-Day Adventist, not a Christian Scientist, not a Taoist, not a pagan, not a Catholic, not anything.
As further evidence of the corruption of religious authorities, they routinely abuse as bigoted, uninformed, prejudiced, those who point these things out, Warsi being but the latest in a long line, those who will not tolerate their perversion of fact, those who will not in turn be perverted.
Thus one of the primary arguments against faith is the degradation of the believer such that he or she, however pleasant or even virtuous he or she may be in other circumstances demands the curtailment of the liberty of those who have not initiated force or indeed deprived others of anything other than the illusion that the world revolves around them, theirs are the only voices that may be heard, and everyone thinks them admirable.
Decay does not cease to stink because the name of God is attached to it.
Liberty forces acceptance of the reality, separateness, individuality and equality of others on the self-willed, as it enables everyone to determine what is reality. By definition, therefore, it is in opposition to those who claim that reality is what they teach it is.
Meanwhile, the so-called Left teaches that self is all that the divorce from both reality and reason be complete, some of the more disgraceful manifestations are conveying to schoolchildren that if they think they are brilliant and gifted they actually are brilliant and gifted, assuring criminals who happen to be non-white that if they think the delineation and condemnation of their crimes is racism being both devoid of conscience and divorced from reality, then it is racism, and teaching us all that if religious maniacs think their beliefs are truth then we must treat them with the seriousness we give to that which is demonstrable.
Clearly all of them are in it, demanding the suppression of reason, the denial of love, the suppression of fact, one of the chief facts they conspire to overthrow being the fact of history that there would be no freedom, no democracy had they retained power, that the assaults of the Enlightenment and Marxism on the power of the intellectually perverted, sexually diseased and psychotic indeed existed.
If we return to Warsi, we may note also the prime difference between the Protestant and Catholic traditions is that the Catholic Church decides what people are to believe. It doesn't work very well in free countries but that is because the countries are free, not because of the Magisterium.
Protestants believe that through Christ they have been given direct access to God, just like a priest; thus the doctrine is called the priesthood of all believers. God is equally accessible to all the faithful, and every Christian has equal potential to minister for God. This doctrine stands in opposition to the concept of a spiritual aristocracy or hierarchy within Christianity. Priesthood of all believers
"The Magisterium of the Church
85 "The task of giving an authentic interpretation of the Word of God, whether in its written form or in the form of Tradition, has been entrusted to the living teaching office of the Church alone. Its authority in this matter is exercised in the name of Jesus Christ."47 This means that the task of interpretation has been entrusted to the bishops in communion with the successor of Peter, the Bishop of Rome.
86 "Yet this Magisterium is not superior to the Word of God, but is its servant. It teaches only what has been handed on to it. At the divine command and with the help of the Holy Spirit, it listens to this devotedly, guards it with dedication and expounds it faithfully. All that it proposes for belief as being divinely revealed is drawn from this single deposit of faith."48
87 Mindful of Christ's words to his apostles: "He who hears you, hears me",49 the faithful receive with docility the teachings and directives that their pastors give them in different forms.
Catechism of the Catholic Church
It is difficult to discern if Warsi is fool or villain or, yet more sinisterly, totally brain-washed, incapable of having a negative opinion of any item Islamic. While the quotations from the Old Testament were jolly, it would have added substance to her work had she included similar quotations from the Koran.
It is not difficult to discern that is her view that no-one else should have a negative opinion of any item Islamic, either, that faith is supreme, that hostility to faith is groundless bigotry, that only a tiny number of Muslims are terrorists, that there is nothing else to criticize, loathe or fear in islam and that consequently any hostility towards any Islam or any Muslims is an irrational unfounded unreasonable, bigoted and to stamped out; all Muslims must be regarded as holding identical beliefs, opinion of Muslims must be withheld.
Should I ever get any political power, it will amuse me to set up a spoof All-Party Committee on Marxophobia, which is of course rife, I tell you, completely rife. It has of course the same root as Islamophobia - the evident intellectual and moral corruption of those societies which call themselves Marxist. As fervently as any liberal Muslim, I say: that is not what my family tradition has to be.
‘Every single facet of Islam is perfectly OK.’ No, it’s not, concerted though the pressure to say it is. Every single facet of the Soviet Union was absolutely and perfectly fine. No it bloody wasn’t. But in many circles you are an Islamophobe if you fail to find Islam wholly acceptable and it is not hard to guess that clever and malign people know precisely what is the flaw and work hard, not least in the Christian churches to keep attention away from it.
People need to look hard at who wants everyone to shut up about Islam and what they want us to shut up about, but of course they don’t and won’t
Maryam Namazie conceivably knows about the conduct of the Islamic Government of Iran
Refugee work[edit] Specialized in international solidarity, Namazie first worked with Ethiopian refugees in Sudan. During the Islamic Revolution in that country[citation needed], her clandestine organisation in defence of human rights, Human Rights Without Frontiers, was discovered and prohibited. Back in the United States in 1991 she became the co-founder of the Committee for Humanitarian Assistance to Iranian Refugees (CHAIR). In 1994 she worked in Iranian refugee camps in Turkey and produced a film about their situation. Namazie was then elected Executive Director of the International Federation of Iranian Refugees with branches in more than twenty countries. She has led several campaigns, especially against human rights violations of refugees in Turkey,[10] and is involved with the International Committee against Stoning.[11] Namazie is also a spokesman for Equal Rights Now - Organisation Against Women's Discrimination in Iran, that serves to defend women's rights and the struggle against "sexual apartheid" in Iran.[12] Namazie has also broadcast programmes via satellite television in English: TV International.[13]
In December 2015, she gave a talk about blasphemy at the Goldsmiths University in London, sponsored by the university's Atheist, Secularist and Humanist society. During her talk, members of the university's Islamic Society caused a disruption by heckling and switching off her PowerPoint presentation when Namazie displayed a cartoon from the series Jesus and Mo. Namazie asked for the disruptive students to be removed, but security refused to do so. Some of the students were alleged to have issued death threats at Namazie and another lecturer.[39] In response to the incident, the university's Feminist Society released a statement on Tumblr, expressing support for the Islamic Society, and condemning the Atheist, Secularist and Humanist Society for hosting "known islamophobes" to speak at the university.[40]
What do people mean when they say Islam is taking over? They mean what they say, and all the shouting them down and screaming about Islamophobia doesn’t change that. They mean Islam is a source of total intellectual and moral corruption in public life. They mean that politicians and priests trumpet WAR IS PEACE. FREEDOM IS SLAVERY. IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH to keep some Muslims happy. Which Muslims?
Whoopee, Islam has given us a Pope who denies Jesus, who says it’s fine to punch people. This must surely be the crowning glory.
38 Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth: 39 But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. 40 And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also. 41 And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain. 42 Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away. 43 Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy. 44 But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; 45 That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust. 46 For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publicans the same? 47 And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others? do not even the publicans so? 48 Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.
Matthew 5
Easy to say does he think he’s talking to Argentinian peasants, but I gather the literacy rate in Argentina is exceptionally good and I doubt there are many people who are not familiar with one of the most famous passages in the Christian world: Argentina it has, according publishes UNESCO, an adult literacy rate of 99.13%. Only in a few countries female literacy rates are above male literacy rates, in Argentina, 99.14% of all women aged 15 years and older are literate, compared to 99.1% of men.
Which Muslims?
If roughly 10% of everyone are gay, 10% of the Muslim community are going to be gay.
PANTHER -> Site news -> Abu Nuwas
by Ysabel Howard - Saturday, 3 December 2011, 04:14 PM
They do not for instance share that one of the Muslim world's greatest poets was gay.
The lies they tell, etc: Abu Nuwas
by Ysabel Howard - Sunday, 21 May 2006, 09:59 AM
Abu Nuwas was born to a father whom he never knew, Hani, who was a soldier in the army of Marwan II. His Persian mother was named Golban, who worked as a weaver. Biographies differ on the date of Abu Nuwas' birth, ranging from 747 to 762. Some say he was born in Damascus, others at Busra, and others at Al-Ahwaz.
His given name was al-Hasan ibn Hani al-Hakami, 'Abu Nuwas' being a nick-name: 'Father of the Lock of Hair' referred to the two long locks of hair which hung down to his shoulders.
When Abu Nuwas was still a boy, his mother apparently sold him to a shopkeeper from Yemen, Sa’ad al-Yashira. The young Abu Nuwas apparently worked for al-Yashira in his grocery shop at Basra, Iraq. In time, Abu Nuwas' youthful beauty and intelligence caught the attention of Walibah ibn al-Hubab, a poet noted for his blond hair. Al-Hubab bought Abu Nuwas's freedom, took him under his wing, mentoring him in studies of theology and grammar, as well as poetry. The two became lovers. Later, Abu Nuwas continued his studies under Khalaf al-Ahmar. Tradition declares that he also lived for a year among the Bedouins to purify his knowledge of unadulterated Arabic.
Abu Nuwas migrated to Baghdad, possibly in the company of Walibah ibn al-Hubab, and soon became renowned for his witty and humorous poetry, which dealt not with the traditional desert themes, but with urban life and the joys of wine and drinking (khamriyyat), loving adolescent boys and young men (mudhakkarat), and ribald humor (mujuniyyat). "For young boys, the girls I’ve left behind, and for old wine set clear water out of mind," is a typical verse of his. "I delight in what the Book forbids, and flee what is allowed," was another, showing how unashamed Nuwas was about his indulgences.
He was infamous for his mockery and satire, two of his favorite themes being the sexual passivity of men and the sexual intemperance of women. Despite his celebration of male sexual freedom, he was less than sympathetic towards lesbianism, and often mocked what he perceived as its inanity. He liked to shock society by openly writing about things which Islam so vehemently forbade. He may have been the first Arab poet to write about masturbation, his judgment being that it was inferior to the love of boys but preferable to marriage.
His commissioned work includes poems on the topic of hunting, the love of women, and panegyrics to his patrons.
Ismail bin Nubakht said of Abu Nuwas:
"I never saw a man of more extensive learning than Abu Nuwas, nor one who, with a memory so richly furnished, possessed so few books. After his decease we searched his house, and could only find one book-cover containing a quire of paper, in which was a collection of rare expressions and grammatical observations."
[edit] Exile and imprisonment
Abu Nuwas was forced to flee to Egypt for a time, after he wrote an elegiac poem praising the Barmakis, the powerful family which had been toppled and massacred by the caliph, Harun al-Rashid. He returned to Baghdad in 809 upon the death of Harun al-Rashid. The subsequent ascension of Muhammad al-Amin, Harun al-Rashid's twenty-two-year-old libertine son (and former student of Abu Nuwas) was a mighty stroke of luck for Abu Nuwas. In fact, most scholars believe that Abu Nuwas wrote most of his poems during the reign of Al-Amin, a caliph who shared Abu Nuwas' tastes for wine and boys. His most famous royal commission was a poem (a 'Kasida') which he composed in praise of as-Amin.
"According to the critics of his time, he was the greatest poet in Islam." wrote F.F. Arbuthnot in Arabic Authors. His contemporary Abu Hatim al Mekki often said that the deepest meanings of thoughts were concealed underground until Abu Nuwas dug them out.
PANTHER -> Site news -> Islamic culture and civilization
by Ysabel Howard - Saturday, 3 December 2011, 04:06 PM
There is an Islam which is delightful, which is civilized and which neither Warsi nor any other member of the political class heaving and sweating on the subject of ‘Islamophobia’ and finally giving birth to a small mouse thinks to tell Britain.
It is central to the subject to discuss these things because, if we are told, as we are, the death-cult, the extremists, or indeed the highly conservative, shall we say, are not Islam or not the totality of Islam, the question arises what then is Islam and no answer is given, only vague generalizations. Nor is Hafiz, Rumi or the artists or indeed the architects and the astronomers the totality of Islam, but any one of them represents a good answer. It is possible to be quite cross with those whose cultural backdrop is Islam and I am, especially with those such as Warsi who have achieved prominence and therefore a platform, from which it generally appears they prefer proclaiming victimhood to telling us all what uninformed idiots we are and rapidly correcting our ignorance, a notable exception being Professor Jim al-Khalili. An alternative image is not all people need but it is a start, that which enables them to shrug off the loonies and say that is not Islam.
It leads inexorably to the conclusion that what they want is acceptance of fascism and brain-death.
This is (my favourite, this one, pensive poets of the world unite, we have nothing to lose but our chains)
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