The Islam Thread

[Lucem Ferre]

Originally Posted by elphenor

Islam isn't anything until someone interprets it

And if it says something garbage like, "If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall be put to death; their blood is upon them." where there isn't much room for interpretation then it's bad even if the people interpreting the religion choose to ignore that part.

[Frownland]

Originally Posted by elphenor

I'm not really educated enough

You really think so?

[jwb]

Originally Posted by elphenor

according to some polls about 40% of Muslims even in the Middle East say there's more than one way to read the text

the idea that there's more than one way to read the text doesn't mean there's an infinite number of interpretations. E.G. there is perhaps some ambiguity about whether Christians should try to follow Mosaic law but there is absolutely no ambiguity about the fact that Mosaic law prescribes the death penalty for having gay sex.

It's also important to point out that there are different genres of writing within the holy books themselves, some of which lend themselves to allegory and metaphor more than others. So Ecclesiastes or Psalms is much more ambiguous in its meaning than Leviticus or Deuteronomy.

The Quran and Hadiths also has different types of passages, some more ambiguous than others. So maybe it's ambiguous exactly what punishment should be meted out to adulterers, for example, because the Quran prescribes a different punishment than the Hadiths. But the fact that adultery is wrong or haram and should be considered a crime is not at all ambiguous.

So ultimately I think the different interpretations argument doesn't offer nearly as much flexibility as you think it does. Religious texts are also not unique in this regard. Marx's writing is also interpreted differently by different readers... But there is a basic core message that if you miss that in his writing that's just a failure at reading comprehension rather than a truly viable alternative interpretation.

To the extent there are progressive adherents to Abrahamic religion, those are people who simply don't follow/ignore large parts of the text that has a backwards message. Which I think is a good thing, but make no mistake that this is what they are doing.

Don't get me wrong, extremists typically do this too and they ignore some of the good parts of the text. There's virtually nobody that follows it completely faithfully as you suggest, but that's because it's contradictory and ultimately not really worth following at all, rather than there being some more enlightened way to interpret it.

[OccultHawk]

I just finished a comprehensive study. I interviewed every Muslim on earth and gave them all a personality test. It turns out they’re great.

[jwb]

Originally Posted by elphenor

I think it's interesting

one interpretation I found for same-sex in The Bible

"While the six passages that address same-sex eroticism in the ancient world are negative about the practices they mention, there is no evidence that these in any way speak to same-sex relationships of love and mutuality. To the contrary, the amount of cultural, historical and linguistic data surrounding how sexuality in the cultures of the biblical authors operated demonstrates that what was being condemned in the Bible is very different than the committed same-sex partnerships we know and see today. The stories of Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 19) and the Levite’s concubine (Judges 19) are about sexual violence and the Ancient Near East’s stigma toward violating male honor. The injunction that “man must not lie with man” (Leviticus 18:22, 20:13) coheres with the context of a society anxious about their health, continuing family lineages, and retaining the distinctiveness of Israel as a nation. Each time the New Testament addresses the topic in a list of vices (1 Corinthians 6:9, 1 Timothy 1:10), the argument being made is more than likely about the sexual exploitation of young men by older men, a practice called pederasty, and what we read in the Apostle Paul’s letter to the Romans is a part of a broader indictment against idolatry and excessive, self-centered lust that is driven by desire to “consume” rather than to love and to serve as outlined for Christian partnership elsewhere in the Bible. While it is likely that Jews and Christians in the 1st century had little to no awareness of a category like sexual orientation, this doesn’t mean that the biblical authors were wrong. What it does mean, at a minimum, is that continued opposition toward same-sex relationships and LGBTQ identities must be based on something other than these biblical texts, which brings us back to a theology of Christian marriage or partnership."

I'm familiar with this line of argument but it's just a case of extreme wishful thinking imo. They prescribe the death penalty for gay sex because they're concerned about "health and lineage"?? That's delightfully vague. Seems much more likely that it was just a subset of what is generically deemed "sexual immorality" by the Bible for a variety of backwards, repressed and superstitious reasons.

For example I saw a woman who was taking this line of argument who tried to explain away the fact that it's supposedly sinful to have sex with your wife when she's menstruating as God trying to incentivize procreation, since you can't get pregnant on your period. Which makes no sense since you would presumably also still have sex when she's not on her period and it's even forbidden for a priest to touch a woman who's on her period. It's just a bunch of ancient superstitious puritanical bull****.

He's right they didn't speak about stable homosexual relationships because they didn't even see homosexuality in that light back then. It was just another form of sexual depravity. And you can take any of the isolated mentions of homosexuality like Sodom and Gomorrah or the New Testament verses and explain it away as it's about rape or pedophilia but when every single mention of not only homosexuality but any deviation from sex within a (then understood to be heterosexual) marriage is presented as negative and even listed as a crime deserving of punishment, it's fairly dense for someone not to see the pattern there.

[Anteater]

Who needs the Quran when you can just rewatch Team America: World Police.

[Marie Monday]

What kind of evidence do you have for that statement about Nea? Especially considering that you do have evidence that he has no problem with gay people, which you literally used as an example. Don't be unfairly negative

[Lucem Ferre]

Originally Posted by elphenor

Yeah I agree, the language seems obviously intended as anti-gay

I don't believe otherwise progressive individuals are held back from accepting The Gays because of Christianity

You don't see how a religious text that is obviously anti gay could hold somebody of that faith back from accepting gay people?

Is there any other context where you'd afford something that is obviously homophobic the same luxury?

It's like Ant level of thriving on ambiguity to justify denying the reality of it.

[jwb]

Tbh I think I understand what he means... Which is that people who are religious yet inclined towards progressive values usually just keep the religion while ditching the homophobic parts... Which is definitely true

But what's also true is the religion making homophobia a part of its doctrine does reinforce and help perpetuate homophobia as a societal norm.

[Lucem Ferre]

Which is why I make the distinction that I think the religion is bad but not the religious.