The Islamophobia Thread

If Saudi Arabia legalized those things, then they would be legal, nothing else. This is just another one of those "if we make legal things such as sodomy in a place like (insert country), the wrath of the gods will fall upon us and we will all die".

And really, the not conservative side of gender segregation is saving children's lives from burning buildings? I think that is called human decency. What everyone is reasonably arguing for here is the ending of all gender segregation.

edited 27th Jun '17 3:05:49 PM by Grafite

Oooh, a philosophical claim. Can I challenge it?

Um, sure, although I'm not really sure what you want to debate. Is it the ramifications?

Anyway, just to add a note here, the prostituion being legal in Nevada was done simply to protect the girls themselves, as they are the most likely to be coerced into doing this sort of jobs and are not the root of the problem. And claiming that it is the only place to do so is a terrible defense, every progressive movement had to start somewhere (from desegration to LGBT rights) and, most of the time, end up being proven right by history.

edited 27th Jun '17 3:17:28 PM by Grafite

What I'm talking about would include, say, a ban on any coeducational schools from elementary level and up (I distinctly remember an American study that strongly suggests an inverse correlation between coedness and student performance^note Basically, the conclusion was that students in a coed school are subject to distractions due to the presence of the opposite sex, among other negative factors.), obligate banks and other service providers to dedicate segregated sections for women and staffed by women (with the further stipulation that the quality standards be the same as for men; my mom frequently complains of how many such women-only sections tend to be quite crappy, with ill-trained and/or snobby employees, when the men's section is much better), but on the other hand allow for male OB-GYN doctors and the like, female police officers (seriously, the UAE already has that and its working quite well!), and other things that don't to my mind at the moment.

Hey, all I was saying is that I was surprised Nevada's government legalized prostitution and made it regulated when the political atmosphere in every other US state seems to consider such a thing taboo. I know full well that prostitution had been already legalized in much of Europe, for example.

edited 27th Jun '17 3:19:33 PM by MarqFJA

About the education segregation: that should be up to the parents, not the country, in almost all of the world there are only-girls/boys schools to choose from if you want to prioritise their education (if that is true, I usually don't research that type of studies) over healthy social contact with the other gender before adulthood.

Next thing you know they'll be importing Frazzles.

edited 27th Jun '17 3:52:38 PM by Elfive

Well, I honestly hope that the younger generation of Saudi Arabia won't be so averse to the "evil" culture of the West and hopefully bring some liberalisation to the country (it seems to be going in the right direction by finally allowing women to vote, for example).

edited 27th Jun '17 4:03:18 PM by Grafite

I asked that question, Marq, because I found it honestly confusing that the street Saudi person would focus on those aspects of Western culture as a source of problems, as opposed to, say, consumerism, individualism and careerism at the expense of family, workaholism, materialism above honor, and so on. Picture an Immature Hedonist whose life has no meaning other than "make money to buy stuff so you can make more money", and who indulges in base pleasures and mood-altering chemicals in a pointless to make said meaningless life less painful. and you get my point. Unless there's a pre-Western way of doing that?

I mean, drug consumption isn't a Western thing: Yemen basically lives on ket, Afghanistan runs on opium...

Ah, I'm really sleepy right now, but I really feel the need to sort out these sets:

• Stuff that is common in (parts of) the West but not in SA.
• Stuff that is common in the planet in general but not SA.
• Stuff that is common in the Islamic world but not in SA.
• Stuff that actually currently harms average Saudi citizens.
• Stuff that, if introduced to SA, might be harmful to Saudi citizens.

As for sexism in Islam, my own assessment would be that s. M., PBUH, put forward a system that was very progressive for its time, but wouldn't be sufficiently equal in, say, modern day Sweden. It was still so vanguardist that he had to backtrack a bit because his followers complained that women were getting insolent and uppity. Since then, jurisprudence and custom have tended to err on the side of patriarchy for most of our history, with a lot of regional variations.

From what I get, modern Saudis are not ISIS-like in that they aren't murderous psychopaths bent on spreading their idea of Islam through blood and enslavement.

However, very roughly speaking they might be comparable to Victorians in their sense of public morality, care for propriety and property, and division of space and roles between genders. A Saudi and, say, a Mormon or a Southern Baptist, might find a lot of common ground. Put them with average Swedes or Danes, however.

Well, to summarize very roughly, Saudis seem so conservative that for people living in the opposite ideological side of the spectrum it might be hard to tell the moderates and the extremists apart. Kind of how, from a standard Saudi POV, it might be hard to tell a twice-divorcee from an Ethical Slut from an actual professional prostitute. Or a married, child-rearing homosexual from a Twink-chasing Leatherman. Or a Lutheran from a Catholic.

I really need to sleep. I'll be back in twelve hours or so. Sorry for the mess.

edited 27th Jun '17 6:27:34 PM by TheHandle

I wouldn't say that was a mess at-all.

That once children hit the age of puberty they should be separated by gender from each other and have their interactions in a controlled environment crafted by society, they should only gain freedom of their interactions upon marriage to their spouse and interactions with their spouse and opposite gender frailty members should be nearly all the interactions that they have with the opposite gender at that point.

You've explained your position on schooling, I understand the logic but disagree with it due to finding the research incomplete (I seriously doubt that the study you're talking about was able to factor out the fact that American children are taught to view opposite gender children in a very sexual manner, thus increasing their distractibility) and that even if true I don't think it's worth making the compromise (I consider learning how to interact with 50% of the human population to be much more important than getting an A in Maths).

I'm curious as to your take on adult opposite gender interactions, I'm assuming that you feel it shodul be in an environment controlled by the revleent families, but I may well be wrong and you're free to correct me. To go further with my own liberalness (this is where I stand out form my society) what do you think of the idea of non-family male-female interaction without romantic or sexual connotations, even close friendships?

I suspect you can outdo add an Orthadox Jew to that group and they'd all agree on many principles of morality, they might well try and kill each other and would often refuse to admit it, but they'd actually find a lot of common ground. Yes I find that fact highly amusing.

edited 27th Jun '17 6:50:31 PM by Silasw

I find it tragic.

"I agree with you on 99% of things, but that 1% is a dealbreaker for me so I hate you"

I've learnt over the years that it helps to laugh at tragedy, it's a solid coping mechanism.

This is how an attempt to prove "Islam is not backwards" backfires.

edited 27th Jun '17 11:57:59 PM by Medinoc

^note 

Acceptance of homosexuals and other LGBT into mainstream society feels like progress to me, by the Original Position / Golden Rule. Acceptance of sodomy, I can take it or leave it.

edited 28th Jun '17 2:24:55 AM by TheHandle

...I think we may have gone a bit off-topic.

The same could be said about driving cars. Or raising kids.

True. 'Tout le monde sait comment on fait les bébés, mais personne sait comment on fait des papas.'

Wait, which of the two(?) meanings of "sodomy" was involved Marq's post? Because it's clear from The Handle's post that they and I haven't picked the same (but traditionally "sodomy laws" involve the broader meaning, not the specific one).

x5 ^note To add to that, and I know this isn't really helping the thread get back on topic very much, but I find it oddly specific and darkly amusing when various religious groups try to use anal sex among their arguments against tolerance of LGBT people. It's far from the sole purview of gay & bisexual men, and for the ones who're supposed to be modest about this kind of stuff, they're being awfully curious and even prying.

A little late, but I think decadent is not the best word to describe some of the things being talked about here. Forbidden might be more apt.

edited 28th Jun '17 3:15:34 AM by AqueousBunnies

Did it backfire? We got to discuss about a controversial subject matter, no one got thumped or banned, you guys finally got to see a viewpoint which is the opposite of yours ^note it is a desire of mine that this website will stop having echo chambers and circle jerks that favour '[insert liberal/progressive capitalist view common in Western countries here]' and will begin to include a few more different views, Marq was willing to talk about his viewpoint when it was not required of him to do so at the start of the conversation and without getting overly defensive (or even partially defensive, imo), and it will allow some people here to understand the other side a bit better, even if disagreements continue.

However, if your definition of success is 'Marq should shun all of his Islamic background and embrace our superior Western values', you're in for a disappointment.

@Grafite:

Um, sure, although I'm not really sure what you want to debate. Is it the ramifications?

Ramifications and the entire structure behind them (moral and philosophical). You can't extricate morality from law, since laws are both a reflection and an enforcement of the customs and cultural norms of a society. Said norms include moral normative claims. For an example, laws against discrimination of LGBT people in most Western countries were put in place because LGBT groups and their allies made a moral claim ('it is wrong to kill us/shun us/discriminate us') that was/is being gradually accepted by modern society. Morality is not located only in religion, it's located in most laws, most political views, and nearly all philosophical views that people have.

Trying to fully separate morality from law is as futile as trying to fully separate moral values from political ideologies and views, because both concern (and in the case of the laws, regulate) the social, cultural, economic and political interaction of different peoples in society.

To tie this back into topic, this interaction of moral-political views and laws helps to explain part of the fears of Islamophobes, because they fear a moral and law system that they think it is directly and entirely opposed to their own particular moral-political views and cultures, a system that they are afraid that will replace the current Western laws and cultures.

edited 28th Jun '17 6:52:14 AM by Quag15

Well, Marq's views on gender segregation aren't even exemplary for all Muslims. I went to school with Muslims of both genders. Neither they nor their parents had any issues with that. That's more a cultural thing, not an Islamic one.

As for the study showing segregated students to do better: If I remember correctly,the adverse effects were not because of sexual distraction but because of stereotyping and discrimination. Like girls doubting their math skills in coed classes and then doing worse or boys gravitating more towards traditionally male fields in an attempt to distance them from the girls. Sexism is the cause of these problems, not the solution.

I just wanted to mention how much I am enjoying reading this conversation. That is all.

I do, however, want to share that I support the sexual segregation of bathrooms.

That is such a trivial issue I don't have much of an opinion on that. It's just that all arguments made in favour of segregation seem to be in the vein of "you can't resist preying on the other gender if you are in the same space as them", which is just nonsense.

Actually, I share a locker room with guys I'm sexually attracted to and you don't see me making a move on them.

This is a tad off topic isn't it? I think the gender segregation discussion would fit better in the Gender and Sexism thread, it doesn't really have anything to do with Islamophobia.