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Things that have been worrying me [2]-Muslim Imam refuses to condemn the stoning of female adulterers

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ONLY NICE THINGS

12:00 / 21.03.06

Not a huge problem, really - nobody needs to have a totally worked-out question before they hit something, and I hope you don't think I was criticising. I just wanted to be sure that I was providing something that you felt was relevant to your concerns.

21:52 / 23.03.06

Sorry if my ideas are too borderline vague to be of much interest to this discussion. As I said, I'm amoral, so I couldn't say whether it is right or wrong for a specific Imam to either condone or condemn the actions of stoners.

As an atheistic suit, at least on thursdays, I'm not inclined to considering the morality of peoples' relationships with their god/gods'/imaginary friends/holy guardian angels, etc.

I might state that I'd consider the stoning of any functioning suit to be a terrible waste of human resources which could've gone to much better use than as fertilizer and/or "an example to other infidels".

I would say that the majority of my tending-towards-Islam friends (I go to university in Dearborn, MI) would liklely disagree with this Imam, and that my own studies of the Koran could produce texts to support OR condemn this action, depending on my mood and the gullibility of my target audience. However, this is the case with the vast majority of organized religionistas, that their texts tend to be vague, contradictory, and open to a multitude of varying interpretations.

I've attending Christian churches, for example, which marry homosexuals (not legally) as well as churches where the speakers make jokes about the surface temperature of dead gay men in hell, so I find it personally difficult to Characterize the beliefs of an entire religion as being either FOR or AGAINST any particular position on ANYTHING.

That said, I would lean towards believing, based on past experience, that this Imam is NOT representative of mainline Mohammadean thought.

Tom Paine's Bones

20:12 / 25.03.06

Forgive my ignorance, but is Israel the name of the Jewish religion in Hebrew? Only, you seem to be comparing the name of a person (and a state) with the name of a religion...

Sorry for the threadrot, but not quite.

Israel, as a name for a Jewish state, is very new. (Unlike 'Israelites' which isn't).

Israel is pretty much interchangable with "the Jewish people" as a term. It's the symbolic name of Jacob and all his descendants, as in 'The House of Israel'. How literal "descendants" is to be taken depends on which strand of religious Judaism you're looking at. So it is heavily linked with the whole concept of the Jewish people having a covenant with God.

ONLY NICE THINGS

06:49 / 26.03.06

So, and help me out here, it's the devotional name of Jacob and the name of a modern state, as opposed to the name of a religion?

07:57 / 26.03.06

<threadrot> One of the foundational prayers of Judaism (Shema, which you might recall from e.g., in this essay on Jewish graphic novel/comic writers) refers to all Jewish people collectively as Israel - "Hear O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One". My understanding is that because it addresses all as "wrestler with G-d", it is legitimately a name for practitioners of Jewish religion (as well as the nation-state; both of which come from the name given to Jacob). Perhaps because of the ambiguity it might be a less common or insider term? </threadrot>

sdv (non-human)

10:25 / 26.03.06

Interestingly - I may have heard the 'iman' on the radio saying that he could not outright condemn the phrase in the Koran because the text is to be treated as the literal word of God. The context is very interesting - firstly that he was being interviewed for a program discussing contemporary critiques of humanism. Secondly that he is a postmodern islamic theologian who is specifically interested in ensuring that the practice of stoning women ends. But who belives that the koranic text is truth and cannot be denied - and that as such it's a question of questioning the practice rather than condemming the text.

What the radio journalist was attempting was to get the theologian to condemn the 'word' rather than to investigate whether the consequences of his work was to stop the practice. What wasn't clear to me at the time was why the theologian's belief that the Koran is truth was so important to the journalist rather than the fact that the theologian was trying to stop the practice of women being stoned...

I had this sense myself that the jornalist was more reactionary than the theologian, even allowing for the stupidity of the theologians religious beliefs.

Not sure if this is on-thread sorry if it isn't but i was very interested in the piece...

sdv (non-human)

10:31 / 26.03.06

The radio programme that the 'iman' was speaking on was Analysis - broadcast on March 16th. It may be available to listen to at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/analysis/default.stm

21:20 / 26.03.06

Okay, so what's a religious person to do when their god demands something of them that is ethically wrong?

This depends on who is interpreting God’s demands for you. If the reason you stone a Muslim women is because you think God told you to. Or because someone told you this is what your god wants (assuming that you are not in favor of stoning but only doing so because you think it’s what God wants)

If you only do this because you are afraid your God will be angry and not allow you into heaven, then you are acting out of self interest and not in a moral way.

That which we do out of fear has no moral value what so ever.

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