Hey,
Firstly, I don't want to spend too much time on this because from my experience I already know where this will head to. Secondly, I am quite busy now days.
Take your time. Conversations of the sort need a lot of time and patience to be carried out, so there's no need to rush.
We answer similar questions to Muslims in Islamic world by saying that let's first worry about getting to heaven. If we know that we will get there whatever we want and it is place of eternal happiness and joy then there is no such thing as 'second class citizens' because everyone will get according to what he did in this world.
I'm not Muslim and I don't believe in the existence of a place such as the one depicted in your book (Heaven or Hell). Besides, that was just an example of inequality between men and women in Islam: even when it came to an imaginary reward, the writer(s) of the Koran favored men over women. I can give more if necessary.
The problem is more than just talking about equality of men and women etc. which I really want to get into instead of discussing and arguing about certain laws. By default, it is understood that men and women are two different beings with different needs and nature. Equating them in everything not only defies simple common sense but it is also a form of oppression.
"Nature" and "needs" are too vague concepts. Biologically, there are several structural differences between women and men, but they do not imply fundamental differences in needs or lifestyle; the only remarkably special features that women have are the capacity to conceive children, something that a man would never experience, unless they change their sex, and it only lasts for 9 months (most of the time), as well as the difference in muscular strength (which is a general tendency). Psychologically speaking there are other points of difference. In last month's
Science & Vie magazine issue, there's a small article on page 17, stating that in situations of danger, men
tend to use the sensory areas of their brain, while women
tend to use the emotional areas. But indeed, we can only speak of tendencies, not definite or exact rules... not to mention rare cases where you can't determine a person's sex.
Any other specifications are mere cultural choices I think. There's nothing fundamentally biological suggesting that a man can't wear a skirt, or that a woman must be put into a black box, and accompanied by a man everywhere she goes.
In prophetic world, justice and freedom are defined as putting things into their right place. Hence, justice is not to equate apples with oranges rather justice is to treat them according to their nature. So generally speaking, would a woman want many men doing with her?
One can do whatever they want with any thing, in the name of respecting the "nature" of that thing. All it takes is to define "nature" according to your own wishes and expectations. I would personally prefer to let people find their "right place" by themselves. Human beings aren't oranges and apples: they are highly complex beings that you cannot frame into a supposedly absolute model of life.
And it is not freedom to let people do whatever they want rather there should be some restrictions and limit of tolerance level. Do your secular laws treat women as second class citizens when they don't allow them to walk without tops in public while men are allowed to do that? Would you like your women folks (wife, daughter, mother etc.) to walk without tops in public or even in home?
Like I've stated earlier, freedom without limits is chaos. In fact, you cannot define freedom in society without specifying a basic system of rules that every individual would need to follow. What we disagree on are the nature and amount of those limits and restrictions. I think that Islamic law puts too many constraints on individual freedom, without any justification, and sometimes the justification is relative to specific circumstances or very weak (pork, alcohol, non marital sex, hanging photos with living beings in them, sculpting, changing religion, etc...), and the punishment is too severe and barbaric (stoning to death, lashing, cutting limbs, stabbing with a sword, etc...).
What women wear/expose in public (whether they're relatives or not) is none of my business.
Secondly, what a person should get and why he is getting that is not dictated by deficient human intellect. Neither humans have come up with a standard/universal set of code to say "a is fine but b is wrong, for example. Hence, for you to say that women are treated as second class citizens in Islam is simply your perception and understanding, which is flawed due many different reasons.
Yups, all judgments are relative to a set of preconceived standards, that are by no means absolute or universal. But this goes also on your consideration that my judgment is flawed. In fact, I've said that since women are given much less rights than men in Islam, they could be considered as second class citizens in Islamic societies.
Lastly, you seem intelligent and a nice person. Hence, we expect people like you to be fair in your criticism. It is well known in the Shari'ah (Islam) that a woman in heaven will have handsome/beautiful virgin husband. The reward is not pulral for women because 1) this is the Law of the Creator and 2) the potential wisdom behind it is that because it is not from their nature to have multiple partners.
Corollary of my third reply: on what basis do you think that women can't be promiscuous?
To a large extent, proofs are very much subjective. Some proofs may be sufficient for some people to believe in certain thing while they may not be for others. So a question to you is, what kind of proof you are looking for you which will be sufficient for you?
Agreed. To an animist, the mere sight of an animal at a certain moment of the day, in a certain way, could constitute a proof that something happened or will happen, for example.
But if you go back to my post, you'll see that I've explained the kind of proof I wanted:
Again I would've hoped to see a proof of that, i.e. an explanation on how you generally proceed to hold a certain idea as true, and another as false...
How do you know what is wrong or right?
Hmm, this is a long and complex subject, so it would probably require a thread of its own. Feel free to start one.
Anyway, "wrong" and "right"(5) can only be determined within a formal system, I think. I would personally use the terms "adequate" and "inadequate": I consider an idea adequate if it could be structuralized(1) into a system of thought which, in a particular thought area(2), could be considered as the most powerful system(3), otherwise the idea is considered inadequate.
(1)To structruralize an idea into a system, is to put it as a principle of that system or to deduce/induce it directly or indirectly from its principles, in such a way that it does not contradict a fundamental(4) principle of that system.
(2)A thought area could be a field of studies (mathematics, physics, etc), an ideology (e.g.: communism), a religion... it could be generalized to a set of several fields (e.g.: religions, sciences) or restricted to a theory within a field.
(3)The judgment "powerful"/"weak" depends on how "well" the objective of the system is achieved. If we take two scientific theories concerning the migration of falcons for instance, one that predicts their comportments accurately in 40% of cases, the other in 70% of cases, the latter would be considered "more powerful" from a pragmatic instrumental perspective. Of course, the objective of the system could be defined in many ways: if I take the simplicity criterion, the former may be better, if it uses simpler mathematical concepts and formulas compared to the later. And if the 40% predictability is enough (it covers most or all important cases for example), the first theory could be considered, under the new criteria, as "the most powerful" system.
You can find an example of that in modern physics: although General Relativity (1916) makes more accurate predictions than Newtonian mechanics (1687), i.e. is a better model of reality, the later is still used for industrial applications and preliminary scientific studies, because it's much simpler and is accurate enough with low velocities and energies.
(4)Minor contradictions in a system could be tolerated sometimes, if it's functional enough (pragmatically speaking) to make its objective reasonably achieved. Though specialists would always work on eliminating the contradictions, or if not possible, on constructing a new stronger theory.
For example, while quantum mechanics and General Relativity are the strongest theoretical constructs in science, they're also fundamentally contradictory. String Theory is only one of several attempts to conciliate them.
(5)Sometimes I use the terms wrong/right or true/false meaning adequate/inadequate, when the context doesn't necessarily require an explanation of the difference between the two dualities, i.e. when the duality true/false is adequate enough for the context.
Now back to the question "how do I make out wrong from right?"
In order not to make this a boring dissertation, I'll dissect my answer into several points:
(1) There are the fundamental wrong/right (adequate/inadequate) propositions, derived from our basic systems: logic, language and direct sensory data. e.g.: in a summer day, the sky is generally blue.
(2) A proposition like "The electron is a component of every atom", cannot be totally verified by logic, language or direct sensory data. In fact, the electron belongs to a reality scale at which "perception" itself, as we experience it, becomes meaningless. It is true only because, once it's structuralized into the quantum atomistic model, it constitutes an adequate model of reality, i.e. provides us with a good instrument to predict the comportments of matter and energy in the observable universe.
(3) The same could be said about any proposition I adopt. I try to follow the scientific method by observing, formulating the question(s), advancing hypotheses, then testing them. I don't pretend that I do the job perfectly. Misconceptions, mis-formulated conclusions, could slip in sometimes because of laziness, lack of time, etc... but I think the most important thing of all is to be open-minded, and keep my critical spirit on all the time.
(4) If a scientific result or theory were adopted by the majority of the scientific community, I have no reason not to do likewise... after all, we are using the same method to construct our models of reality.
(5) I don't believe in the existence of the absolute truth. I don't believe that reality has an ultimate or inherent meaning. Believing in the absolute truth to me, is believing that there's one and only one system of thought that can predict the comportment of the universe in its finest details. I don't see why there wouldn't be many, or none. In fact, I tend to think that we humans will construct more and more instrumentally powerful systems, without ever reaching an ultimate one.
1 - We believe that everyone is born as a Muslim but their parents misguide them; the Arabic term for this is fitrah (natural belief).
Unfortunately for you, your belief is not backed up by any evidence (what does it mean to be "born Muslim" in the first place?). I can also state that everybody is born Hindu, but their social environment (friends, school, family, parents etc...) "misguide" them. Or Christian, or Buddhist, or Satanist... any religion can pretend to be the original authentic one, and that the other ideologies are "fake". Yup, some studies suggest that most people are "programmed" to believe. But this doesn't entail belief in your specific god, or any other god(s). Any belief would serve the purpose, by giving meaning to a persons life for example.
It is also part of our belief that before we were born, we made a covenant with God: He gathered us all and asked us "Am I not your Lord?" and we all said "Yes, you are our Lord". So everyone was born equally on their fitrah.
That's your, and other Muslim's, belief. It's only supported by your scripture, and cannot be used as an argument in a conversation with a person of a different stance.
Before I was born I was no more than a possibility among billions of billions of possible combinations of traits and space-time coordinates. My consciousness wasn't defined in the first place. I can understand that that story makes sense in your own weltanschauung, but to me it's no more than a fairy tale.
How about I say: "before we were born we made a covenant with Lord Krishna: He gathered us all and asked us "Am I not your Lord?" and we all said "Yes, you are our Lord". So everyone was born equally on their fitrah to believe in Krishna."
Do you think you can by any means prove or disprove that statement?
This is the reason why we all agree on certain moral values (i.e., killing an innocent person, raping, stealing, cheating, lying, deceiving, etc.). Hence, God sent His Prophets (peace be upon them) to remind us to stick to our fitrah and remember the covenant that we made with Him; this was due to His Mercy and Justice.
I don't need religion to adhere to basic moral values. I know that adopting and applying them is what allows us human beings live in a healthy environment, and focus on our goals in life. Don't forget that, according to many surveys, Scandinavian countries, which are the least religious in the world, have the lowest corruption rates.
2 - Those who are born as Muslims don't have a choice in choosing a religion. This is what has been decreed for them. It is a duty of parents to raise their children according to Islamic teachings and educate them and block all means which will lead them to apostasy.
People who are born in an Islamic community have the choice to renounce Islam, but that choice is denied to them by Shari'a. And even if a person was raised to be Muslim, they may leave Islam if they come to notice the contradictions, imperfections and scientific errors in the Koran.
1 - Who told you that the laws of apostasy is because we are afraid of what people would say about Islam? If this was the case then we would have hidden all these "problematic" Islamic laws and we wouldn't be even discussing this issue right now. Allah says in the Qur'an: "Truth has come and Batil (falsehood) has vanished. Surely! Batil is ever bound to vanish" [Surah al-Isra (17): 82 - interpretation of the meaning]. Hence, we have nothing to hide or afraid of people's criticism. Islam is what it is; if people like it good for them and if they don't then it is their choice and their loss.
Why is there a great deal of censorship in the Islamic world then? Censorship is what totalitarian and despotic governments do, when they don't want to let people know alternative views.
3 - Law of apostasy is based upon the order of God. It is synonym to treason because by default a Muslim has an allegiance with an Islamic state and a covenant is made. So if one wants to argue against it then he will also have to argue against treason law in many secular countries. To single out Islam is pretty biased and subjective.
Apostasy and treason are two different concepts. I don't want to repeat what other members have said already...
In addition, as I have mentioned before, if we agree that there is a God then this is not only rational evidence for this but also it is the only rational way to go about it because God is perfect and we are not.
No, we do not agree that there's a god, and much less that your god exists.
