What happens to the fellow involved?
I just can't remember what the Cops of Islam have in store for the fornicatee. (I say this because it must be the girl's fault, yes?)

Sounds to me like he's a victim.

Yeah, of irrationality, primitive thinking, and the ensuing barbarianism.

Islam stipulates that the source of evil sexual urges comes from the female. Women are the embodiment of Shahwa (the sexual urge) and must be veiled. This force comes from the devil and all devout Muslim men must control it. Every aspect of a woman's life after 12 must be controlled, monitored and segregated from the male population. Anyone surprised?

Imam Ibn al-Jawzi taught that "beauty of women is one of the poisoned arrows of the devil." All through Islamic religious literature... hell is populated with women. In the Hadith (religious sayings of Muhammad) that as he (Muhammad) stood at the gates of hell: "Most of those who entered there were women."

Remember the odd funeral arrangements for the 9/11 hijacker, Mohammed Atta were made public? No woman should touch his body. Or unclean (full of Shawha) person too.

There was a honor killing of a twenty two year old Pakistani woman named Methal Dayem in Cleveland, OH in 1999. She was 'supposedly' shot by her 2 male cousins, because she refused to be a part of an arranged marriage and dating a non Muslim. Well, the judge had to release the cousins, because of the lack of physical evidence.

My freshman year in college, I worked in a bookstore with a modern Moroccan woman who was married to a traditional husband. At work, her husband would sit and monitor her through the entire work shift. When I would share a shift with her, the husband would give me these intense stares. After a couple days of this, I confronted him coming out of the store’s restrooms. What is your promblem? I’m doing my job and being friendly to your wife. That is it! It’s called living in the 20th Century.” (at the time it was 1994) After the incident, he became very respectful towards me. Actually, the husband is a decent guy, but getting a lot of pressure from his family to change his wife to a more traditional role. Especially, from the men, because he cannot contain her is a sign of being less masculine and impure.

Joe -- The story about your coworker's husband is much appreciated. I'm not used to feeling compassion for such men. The fact that his behavior changed for the better after your confrontation makes me hopeful about the prospects for larger-scale change. -- Leener the Weener

Joe, very educational as usual!

The problem with any fundamentalist religion, especially, (and religion in general), is that it discourages independent thought and use of reason, so breakthroughs like Joe's are rare.

So if you found any hope at all in Joe's experience, please trash it immediately.

I was heartened hearing of his experience -- I just think the time and the person have to be just right to get through to people...it's kind of like picking grains of sand off a beach one at a time vis a vis the strength of the indoctrination. Sorry -- I hate to rain on everybody's parade -- just what I think the reality is.

What Amy said. There'll be time for s'mores around the campfire later. Meantime, we shouldn't be too afraid of confrontation.

The guy in the video must be that "Moderate Muslim" we've all been waiting to hear from.

When Helen Gurley Brown was his age, she went and got a boob job.

Those religious folk sure are obsessed with sex. It sounds like that's all they think about; who is getting it, who isn't, how they're doing it, how they should be doing it. Is this what horny 17 year old guys are like? And since they mostly obsess about women and gay men, I guess they figure they must be the ones getting all the sex, so maybe they're just jealous and pissed off.

No problem. It's a pleasure.

My intention was not to excuse her husband's behavior, but to explain it. One of the reasons he married her was that she was a modern and educated woman.

The problem is the unquestioned loyalty towards the extended family. Then to the tribe and then community of believers. That is the Middle East in a nutshell. Islam and the cultural roots of the faith, cultivate this pressure. Maintaining it through the threat of violence. Eventually leading to the violent act carried out for the charge of blasphemy or in the name of family/tribal honor.

Even the modern Moroccan co-worker still had 'residual' baggage. They were originally from Paris, France. They moved to the USA, because all those nasty French people doing public displays of affection disgusted her. Well, it was one of the reasons. My response was that she was lucky not to live in Italy. The guys there would have grabbed her keester. Or send little messages for a 'moment of mutual appreciation' at their nearby apartments. Married or not.

"The problem is the unquestioned loyalty towards the extended family. Then to the tribe and then community of believers. That is the Middle East in a nutshell."

I think this nails it. My mother-in-law grew up in, and lived in Morocco until she was 30. Though she's a Jew and not a Muslim, the tribal bond thing is very strong in her. She's perfectly happy to cheat and lie to people, if it benefits the family. There really is no concept of applying morality to everyone equally.

I heard an Arab proverb once that sums it up "Me against my brother, my brother and I against my cousin, my tribe against yours, all of us against the foreigner"

> The problem is the unquestioned loyalty
> towards the extended family.

A problem in Mexico, too. A recent article noted that the reason there's so much corruption there: "“Mexicans need few friends because they have many relatives.”

http://tinyurl.com/ylbeqb

Maybe divorce culture is good for America....

OK, I take it back.

"My intention was not to excuse her husband's behavior, but to explain it."

I'm liking you more and more, Joe.

:)

You put an "emoticon" on Amy's site? Really bad idea, Joe.

Sorry. Would it still be considered an act for a newcomer? It will never happen again.

Re blood thicker than water. I have occasionally wondered how I would behave if I knew that my child had committed some heinous crime. Would I turn them in? People do, but it can't be an easy choice. Presumably there's no chance of it happening in a society where loyalty and morality vary inversely with genetic distance.

Chris is right - it generally seems the more religious are also the more obsessed with sex.

Jack, I'm 0% religious, and sex is on my mind constantly.

I think it's worse when you're obsessed with something you can't have.

Salvation?

Salvation?

Exactly! Very nice!

The punishment for the Muslim man takes many forms. Frustrated at every moment, he is easily diverted to useless causes, such as modeling Semtex clothing; he fails to note a fantastic ally standing right in front of him.

What could be greater punishment than to never realize what greatness the woman near him could bring his family?

I agree Norman, it would be difficult decision. There is a slight difference in your argument. You are talking about your son. In the Middle East and other parts of the world, there is no difference between your son or a 6th cousin. Its literally your WHOLE family that matters. Even the mutant relatives. The idiot cousins and such.

There are people who come from the Middle East or around the world that live in the USA. They fully embrace modernity and the laws of their adopted country. But their lives are sometimes in the hands of relatives they have never met before. Also, these relatives may reside in other countries. They will decide on who they will marry, where to go to school and what to major in. All for the benefit of the extended family. The tribe and the community of believers. If they refuse? They will share the similar fate of the Pakistani woman from Cleveland.

It isn't odd or only isolated in the Middle East. Ancient Romans practiced this rite. The expression of family and tribe were interchangeable. The official head of the family/tribe would pick who marries whom. Also, who divorces and remarries all for the sake of the family/tribe.

Even the concept of marriage between a 'loving' husband and wife isn't that old. It is roughly 500 years old. Martin Luther started the concept when he had the hots for a nun. Some consider him the first modern sexual revolutionary. Prior to his reforms, marriage under Christian Europe practiced the old Roman tradition of marriage for the consolidation of extended families. Not out of love or romance between a man and woman under God's supervision. That is why the argument against same sex marriages through a literal religious context is debatable.

The main reason behind the violence in the Middle East is their literal view of the world is on the way out. It cannot compete against modernity.

Some food for thought.

Here's some info on the history of marriage, from a column I wrote quoting historian Stephanie Coontz:

http://www.advicegoddess.com/ag-column-archives/2005/12/holding_on_for.html

Here's an excerpt:

Until 200 years ago, according to historian Stephanie Coontz, “the theme song for most weddings could have been ‘What’s Love Got to Do with It?’” Sure, sometimes love did follow, but for thousands of years, writes Coontz in Marriage, a History, people married for sensible reasons, like keeping peace between France and Spain. For commoners, matches were not typically made in heaven, but in three inches of manure: “My daddy’s pigs and your daddy’s cows forever!”

Back in the 1550s, when it took two to do a lot more than tango, divorce was about as common as cell phones. In those days, putting food on the table meant chasing it, killing it, skinning it, then turning it on a spit over a fire, and there was a bit more to housework than despotting the water glasses and wiping down the microwave. Since the laboring class usually married in their late 20s, according to Lawrence Stone and other historians, and “growing old together” could mean making it to 40, a marriage might have lasted 10-15 years, at best. These days, with some gerontologists predicting that living to 120 will soon be the norm, if you pledge “til death do us part” at 25, you could be promising to spend 100 years together. (You might serve a similar amount of time if you murder several of your neighbors.)

Love isn’t the answer, it’s the problem. As Coontz observes, once people started marrying for love, they started getting divorced for lack of it. Nobody wants to ask whether it makes sense to tell another person you’ll love them until you drop. Yes, it can happen. Everybody’s got a story of that one couple, still madly in love at 89, and chasing each other around the canasta table. Guess what: They lucked out. You can’t make yourself love somebody, or continue loving somebody after the love is gone; you can only make an effort to act lovingly toward them (and hope they don’t find you too patronizing). Love is a feeling. It might come, it might go, it might stick around for a lifetime. It’s possible to set the stage for it, but impossible to control -- which is why people in the market for durability should stop looking for love and start shopping for steel-belted radials.

I’ve always thought a marriage license should be like a driver’s license, renewable every five years or so. If your spouse engages in weapons-grade nagging or starts saving sex for special occasions -- like leap year -- well, at the end of the term, give them bus fare and a change of clothes, and send them on their way. But, what about the chi-l-l-ldren?! Maybe people who want them should sign up for a “delivery room to dorm room” plan, with an option to renew. It’s counterproductive to preserve some abusive or unhealthy family situation, but maybe more people would buck up and make parenting their priority if they knew they just had to get through 18 years on family track: “We’re very sorry you’re in love with your secretary, but there are children involved, so zip up your pants and take the daddy place at the dinner table.”

Some people do have to settle. They’re afraid to be alone, or they aren’t brave or creative enough to thumb their nose at convention, or it’s closing time in the egg aisle, and if it’s male and willing, they’ll take it. According to your friend’s father, “it doesn’t matter who you marry.” Maybe it didn’t matter to him because he’s one of those guys who really just wants a tidy house, regular sex, and hot meals -- and he never figured out he could come close with carryout food, topless bars, and a cleaning lady.

The entire column is at the link above.

The main reason behind the violence in the Middle East is their literal view of the world is on the way out. It cannot compete against modernity.

I would like to take comfort from this, believing that the literalist-fundamentanutters were lashing out because their power base was being eroded by the world wide web. In this view it is just a matter of time until we are all living in some kind of Star Trek paradise. But I can't quite convince myself that it is certain to happen. Just as the planet's climate has several stable scenarios such as ice world (where the ice reflects all the sun's heat that could melt it) or hell world (where greenhouse effect keeps the oceans too hot to absorb greenhous gases and cool the planet down), so our political world has different stable scenarios (eg Oceania/Eurasia/Eastasia). Could we end up in a modern Dark Age that could endure for centuries? Is it at all likely?

Norman,

The main reason behind the rise in religious fundamentalism is fear based. Even in the USA. The fear that their faith is irrelevant in the public discourse. The difference is that the Christian version is farm more tempered and nonviolent. They would prefer to manipulate laws and gain political power through the system.

Why does Intelligent Design movement thrive in the US and not in Europe? Europeans are not threatened by natural selection. Why are evangelicals threatened? They fear that Darwin was right. Even though there are religious people who embrace evolution.

By my nature, I'm not a utopian person. I am both excited and fearful of the future.
Also, I agree with Crid... there will be more confrontations in the Middle East. My concern is the quality of the leadership in the White House. If push comes to shove... will a future POTUS place the ICBM option on the table? Or sacrifice a major US city all for the sake of 'world peace'? These are just a few of the nightmare scenarios that could occur.

About environmental disasters, I agree, but just imagine the tech advances that will be developed in handling these problems? Will all the problems be solved through technology? No.

I highly doubt an Orwellian 1984 nightmare world. One of my former mathematics professor had a simple but profound nonmathematical (actually, you can apply a proof) philosophical statement: "You can find chaos in ordered systems. Also, order in chaotic systems." In some areas there will be increased governmental intrusion and restriction. But other forms of expression will suddenly pop up somewhere else. Look at the diversity, creativity and ingenuity of the 'Underground Economy' as an example. The laws against embryonic stem cell research. There are now various methods of acquiring stem cells that do not violate the ban. Also, the ban will be lifted very soon too. The world, like human nature, is far too complex to fit entirely in an either/or scenarios. It also doesn't mean that all ideas/systems are equal in value. Some are more applicable than others.

"Even the concept of marriage between a 'loving' husband and wife isn't that old. It is roughly 500 years old. "

Joe,
You say - most obligingly - "food for thought"!
So - what about Chaucer's Wife of Bath's Prologue? Written c. 1400.

I'm not getting prissy about the exact date of publication - my point being that the Wife's famously earthy and brilliant discussion of the importance of love, trust and who is in charge in marriage is clearly raking over what were very familiar and popularly debated concepts at the time?

Another jew bad mouthing muslims, wow what an original concept. I'm positive that anyone can dig up similar stuff about fundamentalist jews and definately from Jewish scripture.

Who's the Jew?

Are you talking about me? I was born Jewish, but I have no religion now. I find all god believing religions primitive and silly, but Islam more primitive than the rest of them, because it functions as a death cult rather often.

There's plenty of ugly stuff in the Christian and Jewish bibles. Here's the difference: You don't see pastors or rabbis getting up on the pulpit and advocating giving a woman a good beating -- or killing her, or killing the "infidels."

Is despising that sort of thing (the footage above) a "Jewish" thing, or is it non-denominational thing, and the mark of a civilized human being.

What do you find so wonderful and admirable about the words of the sick fuck speaking above?