I'm culturally insensitive.

[cali]

At least when it comes to Sharia law, or any system of law that's rooted in religion. I just don't think religious law has any place in the temporal world. I'm not suggesting that any power has the right to stop people from living under such law, I'm just saying I reserve my right to pass judgement on such a legal structure. Religion makes for lousy law, and if I'm deemed culturally insensitive for saying so, that's fine with me.

[muntrv]

1. Do you feel the same about 700 Club Law?

That's what we're getting here in the U.S..

[cali]

4. Sheesh.

From the OP: "....or any system of law that's rooted in religion. I just don't think religious law has any place in the temporal world."

And you are wrong. Our system of law is NOT rooted in religion. It's roots are English Common law and the Enlightenment. Just yesterday the Ninth Circuit ruled in an important case regarding religion in the work place and they came down on the side of the employer's right to curtail religious activity. In December, in the Kitzmiller case, Judge Jones ruled that ID was religion not science and couldn't be taught or even mentioned as an alternative to evolution. It's just absurd to claim that we live under a 700 club system of law. Even with Alito and Roberts on the Court we haven't seen a dramatic shift toward injecting religion into the legal system. I'm not saying it couldn't happen, and it's definitely something we should be vigilant about, but we do not live under a religious system of law.

[Shadowen]

21. Doesn't mean they aren't trying.

*shudder*

[tom_boy]

8. is there really still a 700 club?

What kind of laws do they have?
Do they forbid pork and art?
Do they force the veil?

I always thought there only real law was pastel leisure suits and bad hair for the women.

[ret5hd]

2. so, has someone here praising sharia law...

or are we just tryin' to get an argument started?

:popcorn:

[OKNancy]

3. I guess you read this

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x2259942

[cali]

5. I did read that, but

it's actually something I've been thinking about posting for a while.

[rememberearth]

6. amen.

i completely agree.

[Igel]

7. Most of the world's peoples are fairly culturally

insensitive, welcome to the majority. For the most part the best you get is condescension and dismissiveness.

I'm iffier when it comes to shari'a, at least in principle. Any law is going to be rooted in a people's values and morals--many of the basic questions simply aren't amenable to good science and ratiocination, as many a philosopher, in disagreeing with some other philosopher, has discovered--and there's usually a relation between what gets encoded in a religion and what gets encoded as law.

(on edit: lest some--not you, cali, I don't think, but some--think that not saying something implies holding the opposite view, I will say that I basically think that traditional shari'a sucks. The word covers a range of legal interpretation, but most of them seem quite illiberal. Defining the term as a small sect would for in-group purposes, or defining it to cover the part of the range that is most palatable to westerners in order to gain some sort of pointless, empty respectability, is simply disingenous, if not worse.

[manic expression]

9. Culture is culture

there may be things that are wrong with a society, but one must keep some things in mind. First, it is hypocritical to point out things that are wrong in one society from a person who is living in a society that is far from admirable. Secondly, change does come, but it must come organically; as an example, the Emir of (IIRC) Qatar gave women the right to vote, and there were widespread protests OF WOMEN against this. He not only kept women's suffrage but created al Jazeera as a way to educate the people and add more perspective. THAT is justified and helpful change. If you start to condemn an entire culture because of shortcomings in a certain area, that is more than myopic and incorrect, that is simply foolish. Cultures do change for the better without being erased or lessened, and cultures are the fabric of human interaction.

Remember, there is a fine line between constructive, reasonable criticism and unwarranted and wrong insults (I'm not saying that you're insulting anything, it's just something to think about).

[cali]

12. Sorry, I can't buy into

your reasoning at all. It's sophmoric. Suggesting that it's hypocritical for a person living in a flawed society to criticize aspects of another society is not good enough reason to abstain from critical thinking. What do you think organizations like Amnesty International do? Or any other human rights organization. Not to mention that I'm an individual, speaking as an individual and not representing my country.

I didn't suggest that imposing change was legitimate. In fact, I made clear that I do NOT condone such actions, not only in my OP, but in a subsequent post.

Blanket statements such as: "Cultures do change for the better without being erased or lessened, and cultures are the fabric of human interaction" are essentially meaningless. Sometimes cultures change for the better, sometimes for the worse. Think close to home on that. And what does it actually mean to say cultures are the fabric of human interaction? That's just vague.

Finally, I didn't condemn an entire culture. I expressed a judgement about systems of law rooted in religion, specifically Sharia. We make judgements all the time. That's not neccessarily a bad thing.

[manic expression]

13. First,

what I was suggesting was a bit of perspective. If you live in a country where gays are bludgeoned to death (not to mention routinely ostracized), where women's rights are lessening by the day, then criticism needs to be tempered with recognition of these similar shortcomings.

Amnesty International works to stop governmental abuse. It does not work to change cultures (if anything, if works to preserve them).

Again, I said that there are many important things to keep in mind, not just to you, but to anyone who does walk the tightrope of cross-cultural criticism. That was not as much a condemnation as a statement.

Yes, sometimes cultures change for the worse. So what? The important thing is that the improvement is the goal. This only acknowledges that cultures can change for the better without being subject to unnecessary alteration. That's quite important.

It's a statement that applies to a broad subject, so of course you could call it "blanket". However, there are undeniable commonalities in such a subject, and that is what this kind of statement highlights. Anyway, culture is the background in which humans communicate and exist, as it is the medium of life for an entire society.

I shouldn't have (mistakenly) implied that you condemned anything in my last statement. Perhaps I was talking to people who may or may not be reading this. However, if a law "rooted in religion" is bad, it is bad; if an equally rooted law is acceptable and good, it is acceptable and good. The type of root has little to do with the way a flower blossoms.

[cali]

15. You're mistaken about Amnesty.

They've been deeply critical of Sharia in Nigeria and Afghanistan (post Taliban as well as pre taliban)
They've tried to be diplomatic about it, but they've still caught a lot of flak for it. Amnesty does work to stop governmental abuse, and in quite a few countries Sharia is an extension of the government. Culture and government cannot be neatly separated. In most place they're entwined.

Some things transcend culture. Stoning women for rape or having a 16 year old cut the throat of his father's killer are two examples.

And yes, an individual law rooted in religion could conceivably be a good law, but that wasn't what I was talking about. I was referring to a system of law. Different thing. No system of law rooted in religion is suited for the temporal world.

[manic expression]

16. Not fully

Sharia law is oftentimes intertwined with governmental abuse, which is the reason AI does anything in the first place. Therefore, it's the government that's the problem.

Yes, and those are things that can be changed for the better without changing the culture itself. That's the main point.

Well, entire systems of law such as Sharia are bound to be from a very different time, making it hard to change at all. That doesn't make for a flexible code, and so it is impractical in the first place.

As a tangent, I would like to point out that Islam and certainly Sharia are not native to Nigeria, for instance. They were brought there by those who thought their religion/values were better. Just something I find interesting.

[Rosemary2205]

10. Oh I'm a just plain bigot

I certainly don't expect people to live my way but when people of other lifestyles/languages expect me to tap dance around them in my own home/job/life then I get irritated. Not rude, just irritated. When people call my American home and expect me to speak in a language other than English I simply hang up. If I shop near my home and the clerk cannot manage English I leave my purchases behind and shop elsewhere.

I appreciate the cultural norm in some places is to pile the old living room furniture, dead appliances and cars out in the front yard - but that's not the established culture in on my street and I have no problem contacting my city/county to lean on the "guilty" to clean it up.

I don't mind and in fact rather enjoy that the woman working in the next cubicle is from Japan. However, when they come to my home for the office party, I have no patience with her being out of shape because I did not supply her and her husband with slippers at the door.


As for Sharia law in some Islamic country - honestly, I have enough problems negotiating my way through my own part of the world to worry about imposing my way of life on them.

[porphyrian]

11. Religion may make lousy laws, but it makes a great form of govt.

Take Christianity, for example. Some really bad policy over the years, but a great means of controlling a populace.

[REP]

14. I'm With You

Ever notice that when something 'traditional' harms men as well a women, suddenly it's a human rights issue, but when it mostly harms women, then it's a cultural difference and we must tolerate it. I say bullshit. Wrong is wrong in any culture. Just because a system has been in place for a long time doesn't mean it is moral, correct or just - or that is forbidden for others to criticize it.

[The Magistrate]

17. You Have Put Your Finger On It, Ma'am

That seems to be the dividing line in multi-culturalist protestations against criticisms of other societies.

[REP]

18. Thank You

For agreeing, and for getting my gender right!

[American Tragedy]

19. Precisely what I was thinking, REP.

Moreover, defending any systems or policies, particularly those which are brutal or oppressive, strictly on the basis of longstanding tradition or religion is a historically conservative fallacy and has little place in progressive thought. I wouldn't expect to see that here.

[REP]

20. I'm Not Surprised; Here's Why

Sometimes people confuse tolerance with abandoning all common sense. Tolerance is putting up with strange but harmless customs that are meaningless, contrary to one's beliefs or even offensive - as long as these customs do not harm anyone. Common sense is saying that a long-held practice that is harmful, socially and/or physically to a segment of society because of some inborn trait (female genitalia, sexual orientation, race, etc) is wrong, no matter how long it has been practiced and no matter how it is justified. Cruelty, victimization and exploitation do not have to be honored as a cultural difference.

[American Tragedy]

22. Of course, it is quite easy for those who do not share these inborn traits

to be 'tolerant' of discrimination against those who do.