"Steve Walker" wrote in message
news:68p0n1F2thkcdU1@mid.individual.net...
> Robin T Cox wrote:
>> On Sun, 11 May 2008 15:23:55 +0100, Steve Walker wrote:
>>
>>> Ummm - to a point, Lord Copper. Most other religions have left
>>> behind the really mad "heteric-burning" stuff, leaving only tiny
>>> pockets of marginalised fundamentalism. Unfortunately in modern
>>> Islam the fundamentalists remain much too influential
>>
>> The religious fanatics are zealous, and are about their nefarious work
>> everywhere. Especially the Christian Right in the US, who are pushing
>> (in the last days of the Bush administration for war with Iran in
>> order to boost the neocons' candidate McCain.
>
> I agree completely, the neocons arguably have even less excuse for their
> barbarity because they've benefited from education in a modern society.
> But nonetheless, Islam has a lot of catching up to do before it can be
> considered a religion of peace.
I consider it a religion of peace, as do huge numbers of people throughout
the world.
Honour killings have little to do with Islam and everything to do with a
misogynistic and anti-homo.ual (I don't like the word homophobic) culture
in some areas of some Muslim countries. The father of the family believed it
was a terrible disgrace that his daughter had been, as he saw it, flirting
with a man whom she could never marry: therefore she was only one stop away
from being a whore.
The father of the family was of course wrong. However it seems that there
were plenty of people including police officers in his neighbourhood who
sympathised with him. You can't change those attitudes overnight, or even
over a decade, merely by invading the country, slaughtering some citizens
and imposing Freedom and Democracy.
It wasn't that long ago that in England a woman was considered to have lost
her honour if she was in the company of a man without a chaperone and in
circumstances where she could theoretically have had .ual relations with
the man because there were no witnesses to the contrary: this is of course
illustrated in David Copperfield and in the works of Jane Austen. The
attitude isn't that different, but women wouldn't be killed for having lost
their honour. Nor, I suppose, would they normally be in Iraq, but maybe a
poor household takes these things more to heart than a wealthy household.
The murderous father also remarked that if either of his sons were to turn
out to be homo.ual they would share the fate of his daughter.
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