More importantly, why are ANY tax dollars from any CIVILIZED nation going to these tech-enabled barbarians ???
The way to think about Jinn in orthodox Islam is to think of them as beings in a parallel plane of existence. They have their own society, blasphemers, saints, idiots, and tax-men that is invisible to our own. They are unimportant to the religion in and of themselves, but because the idea of a parallel invisible city of creatures coexisting with us is so compelling, theyâre often the source of everything from old wivesâ tales to scary stories around a campfire. Their only real relevance to day-to-day religious practice is the idea that Satan isnât a one-off creation of God, but a member of this race, from which he collects his followers. Except for that, jinn are considered largely benign.
That being said, because of the legacy of most medieval ideas about mental illness, the word currently used to mean âcrazyâ in modern Arabic is derived from the word âjinnâ and is âmajnoonâ. In other words, what causes mental illness is possession by malevolent spirits.
But I have to say that Iâm interested in this book. I was raised a religious Muslim, and like all good nerds, I really got into the minutiae of religious doctrine. I remember thinking that jinn were just really, really cool as kind of a sci-fi concept and the fact someone else thinks so definitely makes my day.
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As a side note. âRaidingâ might be a strong word for what happened to the bookstores. When I lived in the Gulf, the bookstores were largely complicit (though if there were rogue booksellers, I probably wouldnât have met them). Everyone knew there was a List, and that the bookseller knew what was on the List, but of course you couldnât ask to see the List because the List was secret*.
So you downloaded it off the Internet. Of course, Iâve never actually lived in Saudi Arabia, and the best way to describe it is as Ibrahim Abdel-Meguid did in the title of his novel- The Other Place. No one is more keenly aware of just how weird and capricious life in the Kingdom of Saud can be than other Arabs whoâve lived there. Itâs just a very strange place in a lot of ways.
*Before you laugh at the obscene quaintness of it, think about the last time you were in an airport here in the US. Ask anyone who has lived in an authoritarian country how close or far the US is getting, and theyâll probably tell you weâre pretty much there in a lot of ways.
Indeed. Wait, are we talking about Texas now? I think their penchant for putting people to death is getting right up there as well.
My, but arenât WE smug today. Comparing executions in accordance with the law, after a fair trial by a jury of peers, to the self-appointed Guardians of Public Morality banning a book, forcing unveiled girls to burn to death and otherwise being shining examples of everything thatâs wrong with ANY religious fanaticism.
Besides, Texans have NOTHING on Prince William County, Virginia, when it comes to executions. . .
Crazy group of religious people do something crazy that other crazy people of the same religion all agree was necessary.
Asked to explain just why they were so crazy, crazy religious people refuse to acknowledge their clearly crazy religious mania.
Observers shrug their shoulders and ask one another if they really expected anything less; somewhere on the earth, a crazy religious person realises how crazy they are and makes an effort to be less crazy religious.
Wash, rinse, repeat and in about a hundred million years the last crazy religious person will convert to crazy secularism.
scoff
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I rather think thatâs the point.
Edit, actually no; Salgak is perfectly srs, scoff away.
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Thatâs a stretch. Check out the innocence project. Or just do a tiny bit of numbers crunching - 160,000 some prisoners total in Texas, at a 2% error rate thatâs 3,200 people in prison who shouldnât be. People who have already been executed have later been proven to be innocent.
Convicted sure, but⌠peers? fair? I see that as a maybe at best.
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Iâll start being concerned about problems in the justice system after we stop having a two-tier Justice System. We have YET to see anyone indicted, much less jailed, for all the Mortgage shenanigans on Wall Street.
IF youâre rich and/or connected, and prefererably both, you can buy your way out of nearly anything.
And letâs remind ourselves of the ORIGINAL conversation: someone compared executions by sentence of court versus self-appointed religious âpoliceâ banning a book. . . which circles right back to my argument: those âVirtue and Vice Policeâ are connected to the Wahabbi Mullahs who back the House of Saud. . .
[quote=âSalgak, post:30, topic:15269â]
Iâll start being concerned about problems in the justice system after we stop having a two-tier Justice System.[/quote]
So⌠no need to worry about the underprivileged until we square away the overprivileged? Besides being a bit backward, I donât think thatâs going to work out well for anyone.
They are a Government organization, which enforces Sharia law - in a country that has chosen to live with Sharia law being the highest law in the land. It seems like you make them out to be vigilantes, they arenât.
Neither system seems great to me, but they are at least getting the justice system theyâve agreed upon - Sharia law. Are we in the western world getting the justice system we agreed upon?
I see. Saudis = barbarian. I guess they shouldnât be allowed to choose for themselves how to run their country then.
[quote=âThecorrectline, post:32, topic:15269â]
Neither system seems great to me, but they are at least getting the justice system theyâve agreed upon - Sharia law.
[/quote] Agreement presupposes the ability to dissent. Censorship precludes that. If the camel (censorship) getâs his nose in the tent, he will use that to make sure you canât keep his body from following. On top of which half the Muslim population is by definition disenfranchised under the US-backed monarchyâs self-serving fundamentalist interpretation of Sharia law. Besides which, itâs provincialist to assume that just because you live in a republic, all governments govern with the consent of the governed.
None of which is to minimize the very real problems the United States and other Western republics face from within. But making simplistic comparisons between injustices in different cultures is facile, hyperbolic and chauvinistic with a dash of cultural imperialism. Using it to minimize or shrug at either is a function of the privilege you enjoy to be able to minimize or shrug at it. Shockingly, many people around the world and in the United States donât have the luxury of relegating injustice to internet slap-fights. While you and Salgak are busy scoring imaginary rhetorical points and measuring yourâŚinjustices, others actually have to live through them.
Learn US history. We in the US had a little disagreement over whether some laws were too important to be left up to the individual states - it only took around 800,000 deaths to settle the question. The ability to dissent?
They live with sharia law. I live with commonwealth law.
The basis of their law is that what is important is the immortal soul, the next life. The basis of western law is this life, the physical body. The difference between the two outlooks is what drives nearly all of these discussions. Philosophy really, actually, in the real world, changes lives and even kills people. Go ahead and spout your âmorally superiorâ opinion. The two are radically different, they produce radically different governments, completely different laws⌠and they are both subject to the will of the people governed. Iâm sure thatâs just a âchauvinisticâ opinion of mine somehow.
They have to live through the injustice? Umm, no. They donât. Tell that to the myriad of peoples throughout history that have changed their government to eliminate the injustice. Itâs going on right now, try looking at a world politics news site and tell me whatâs happening in Thailand, among many other places.
This is their culture, their society, their laws, their police, their government.
The larger point is that Sharia is a legal system not a carte-blanche license to kill.
This is an important distinction I donât often see made. At least in principle, people are supposed to be tried fairly under Sharia law. In Islam, a judge that makes excellent and fair judgements is not rewarded in heaven, but punished in hell for poor judgement. Itâs supposed to suck to be a judge in Sharia law. There are rules of evidence, issues of where and whether precedent is binding, etc. Sharia is the method by which law is upheld, but not necessarily a progenitor of any specific law. It is somewhat tiresome when people pretend that Sharia law is substantially similar to a feudalistic anarchy.
Now whether people are tried fairly in the Sharia judicial system in Saudi Arabia is another matter- but not necessarily connected to Sharia ipso facto. Hell, you could certainly argue that Sharia itself is a crappy system, but not in this context or in this way. In other words, complaining that the Saudi legal system sucks is one thing, putting the âpoliceâ in scare-quotes is another.
I hate the Saudi royal family (and all other royal families*), and donât advocate for true Sharia law, but Iâve never found myself getting too comfortable with people who trot out âbarbarismâ in their criticisms. Often this serves to detract from the criticism itself, especially when it perpetuates misconceptions of the dynamics being observed. I think what @Thecorrectline is getting at is an undercurrent of supremacist tendencies that seems to crop up whenever these discussions are had about other countries and cultures that tends to go unexamined.
*Unless your last name happens to be âRoyalâ I guess.
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[quote=âThecorrectline, post:34, topic:15269â]
They have to live through the injustice? Umm, no. They donât. Tell that to the myriad of peoples throughout history that have changed their government to eliminate the injustice.
[/quote] You apparently donât understand the difference between live through and live with. And any argument that people consent to something unless theyâre willing to jeopardize their lives, livelihoods or families to put a stop to it is just another form of victim blaming.
[quote=âThecorrectline, post:34, topic:15269â]
Go ahead and spout your âmorally superiorâ opinion.
[/quote] You read whatever the hell you want into other peopleâs comments, donât you?
[quote=âThecorrectline, post:34, topic:15269â]
The two are radically different, they produce radically different governments, completely different laws⌠and they are both subject to the will of the people governed.
[/quote] When the US government is being propped up by an imperialistic superpower, then weâll talk about whoâs will is determining who does the governing and how. For now, if you really think that the US and Saudi Arabia are parallels in the voice a citizen or subject has in their government, I can only suppose you must be trapped in an even more dystopian future where the Tea Party has installed Pat Robertson as dictator.
The US justice system has myriad flaws, is rife with corruption and enforces many unjust laws. The death penalty is also unacceptable. But to pretend that the Saudi Arabian justice system is just what Saudis ask for the same as commonwealth law is bullcrap. If your response to injustice is to minimize it by pointing out another injustice in another country, youâre doing it wrong. One wrong in Texas or Virginia does not justify another wrong in Saudi Arabia or anywhere else.
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Thank you. That was an excellent and insightful reply.
[quote=âActionAbe, post:35, topic:15269â]
but Iâve never found myself getting too comfortable with people who trot out âbarbarismâ in their criticisms.
[/quote] Indeed, @Salgakâs comment about civilized nations and tech-enabled barbarians is vile bigotry.[quote=âActionAbe, post:35, topic:15269â]
I think what @Thecorrectline is getting at is an undercurrent of supremacist tendencies that seems to crop up whenever these discussions are had about other countries and cultures that tends to go unexamined.
[/quote] Perhaps, and if so, itâs too bad @Thecorrectline didnât say so instead of going instead for an insult of the educational background of someone she or he has never met*. But as it stands, the argument above seems to be that country Aâs injustices are just like country Bâs injustices. That form of argument is usually deployed to minimize one or the other.
*I see either Thecorrectline or a moderator has removed the barb about community college. Iâm inclined to believe the latter as my response to it has also vanished. Probably better for the quality of discourse all around. Thank you to the mods for trying to keep things civil.
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So itâs âvile bigotryâ to come out against a culture that treats women as chattel and considers their primary purpose to be inciting lust in otherwise perfect men. A culture whose LIGHTEST punishment of the high crime of being gay is imprisonment, and often goes to whipping and execution ?? A culture which not only permits, but accepts âfemale circumcisionâ as a regular and normal practice ? Then yes, call me a bigot. Iâve been to Saudi, and seem much of this first-hand. And I call it as I saw it. . .
Itâs vile bigotry to pass sweeping judgements on diverse cultures based on broad generalizations even if youâre an insider, let alone an outside observer. Otherwise an argument for barbarism could be made for the United States which is knee deep in its own dysfunctions. Yet that argument too would be bigoted, even if made by an American. The false dichotomy of civilized and barbarian nations is a colonialist myth used to propagate, as @ActionAbe points out, cultural supremacism. Incidentally, the vile was emphatic, not exclusionary. All bigotry is vile.
Given the enormous amount of Streusand they used it must be totally icy beneath it.
But seriously, I donât think they give a damn about the Streisand effect, and why should they? First, they donât have to worry about stuff they sell or the nuisance of getting re-elected etc. Second, they know they are doing the right thing and fulfill godâs will. So why even bother to argue (let alone develop independent thought)?
