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Tuesday, August 16, 2005 - 1:57pmSanction this postReply
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Adam,

Thank you for posting this link. The U.S. should have had the guts to dictate an Iraqi Constitution which declared individual rights inviolate. Now we are stuck with the abomination of having  some pathetic compromise with Sharia in the new Iraqi Constitution.

Jim


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Tuesday, August 16, 2005 - 2:26pmSanction this postReply
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We often view ourselves as the bringers of freedom, and we do that.

But, behind us lies religious thought, whether overt, or not. Our values were framed by western thought. They were framed, primarily, by Christians.

I will not go into the abomination of what is Christianity on some of our fronts; that internal battle is being done elsewhere.

Often, I have heard this term used in debate: "Why are you suprised that..."

I ask this back to you. Does it occur to us that there is a polarization of religious thought, that lies behind both the U.S., and the Middle East?

Let me be specific: Maybe they don't want "it".  What "it" currently consists of isn't all that tasty, even to those of us within the West who are accustomed to our own stylings.

In Iraq, it appears to me that, on best case, there will be a modified form of democracy. Meaning, while religious leaders might not have legislative authority, they will remain such that they do not need to have it, because they will remain a stong influencer on the ground. This seems what these folks want. And, it's not that different from what we have. Think about it: polarization. Polarization within the Christian and Islamic cultures. They both are showing strong activity, pointers, if you will, to Fundamentalism.

Our Fundamentalism simply looks a little different, on the jump, than theirs does. Both sides are prey to Fundamentalism. Fundamentalism doesn't care what clothes it wears; a shit sandwich is a shit sandwich. Women particularly suffer, still. I won't go on about other flavors of free humanity.

It has always been pointed out (yes, including by mystics) that there will be a great global confrontation between Islam and Christianity. I see this occurring.

We are not keeping our own house clean enough. The answers are not so simple, anymore.


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Tuesday, August 16, 2005 - 2:26pmSanction this postReply
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She wasn't just writing about Iraq, but Canada too.

I have tremendous respect for Ms. Ali.  She is truly brave for working with Theo Van Gogh to make the movie, "Submission", and to work on the sequel after his assassination (the assassins left a note threatening her life too). 

I appreciate that women may not be fully equal to men under the first version of this constitution, but it is inaccurate to say that they had more freedom under Saddam.  Under Saddam, no one could freely speak to anyone without being sure that Saddam's minders weren't around ready to pounce on, arrest, and even torture to anyone who showed the least dissent.  You could say that women had more freedom relative to men under Saddam, because he'd kill equally.  And let's not pretend that women in Iraq had special protection against Sharia while Saddam was in power.  How often do you think that Saddam arrested a man for an "honor killing" of a female family member in a Shiite village?

Of course I'd like to see us push our objectiviely superior values on them more forcefully, but if we did, the Left would scream about cultural imperialism.  Political change happens incrementally.  Kuwait only gave women the right to vote in the last year.  Egypt is holding multiparty elections for the first time in their recent history this year.  This constitution in Iraq is the beginning of the rule of law, making their Sharia start to integrate with our ways.  I hope that the women there eventually march for and gain their full rights, as the women of America were able to do a few generations after we adopted our Constitution.


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Tuesday, August 16, 2005 - 6:48pmSanction this postReply
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I don't know any muslim women, but if I did I would ask them, "Do you want to reform Islam to be more favorable to women or do you want to be free? What is the point of struggling against a religious tradition, if the real goal is to think for yourself, to take responsibility for yourself and to reject irrational delusion?" I suppose the response would be something like, "Are you suggesting that I abandon my faith? My family would reject me! I would be an outcast in my own country!"

I sympathize, but the price of freedom, especially for the first courageous few will be high. This is easy for me to say, not being a muslim woman, but trying to reform a religion from within might take hundreds of years, and ultimately is almost completely wasted effort. You can't save a billion believers from themselves, but you can save the one that matters most, and that's you.

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Wednesday, August 17, 2005 - 5:07amSanction this postReply
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James, the US government needs to recognize the inviolate individual right of people who live in the US before it concerns itself with people who live on the other side of the world.

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Wednesday, August 17, 2005 - 11:13amSanction this postReply
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Rick's right about rights (and of the fountainhead foreign-policy flows from).

Ed

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