The subtle micro aggressions of islamophobia

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
One thing that is abundantly clear is that you have never read the book. I'm going to quote passages from her book because I have it. Not now but later when I have more time. You google and cut and paste and don't even understand what you are posting sometimes. This is because you are entirely agenda driven, islamophobia driven. Leila Ahmed has clearly stated:

"the ethical injunctions of Islam were rarely translated into enforceable laws. Only texts that orthodox theologians, legists, and philosophers (the likes of Al-Ghazali) created were--and continue to be--regarded as the core prescriptive texts of Islam. But Ahmed also makes it clear that this intense misogyny was neither originally nor exclusively Muslim in character, but rather the consequence of a cultural negotiation between Islam and "an urban Middle East with already well-articulated misogynist attitudes and practices":
[B]y licensing polygamy, concubinage, and easy
divorce for men, originally allowed under
different circumstances in a different society,
Islam lent itself to being interpreted as
endorsing and giving religious sanction to a
deeply negative and debased conception of women. "

The vast majority of scholars, not only Leila Ahmed, simply stand in direct contradiction to your opinions, largely based on google research and fueled by intense hate and gross misconception.

Leila Ahmed was quite clear about the demonization of Pre-Islamic Arabia, and romantization of improvements that Islam brought to women. If you have any questions about her characterization of these periods, or her comparison of Khadija and Aisha, take it up with her. Or, if you think I faked these paragraphs, do let us know.

Anonymous wrote:
I look forward to helping the many writers, Imams, Islamic organizations, and nonMuslim media outlets I have now contacted to address the kind of islamophobia your posts exemplify.

After the articles are published, I will post links to them on DCUM with Jeff's permission. You have certainly taken up a lot of my time but it has not been wasted. I should thank you for being the catalyst for such a large scale effort now by so many people to address the problem of islamophobia.

No one is scared of you. Call the UN if you want.

Let's recap how effective you were here, in this little corner of the world. Not one reader of DCUM found your arguments convincing or well-reasoned (if I'm wrong, someone correct me). Not one reader of DCUM left these threads with a better or more favorable idea of Islam because of you. If you wanted to be a good representative for your religion, you failed. You behave poorly and you argue poorly. Is anyone reading these threads more impressed by Islam because of you? What do you think?

And all the Islamic organizations and imams in the world - hell, the entire corps of Al-Azhar and King Saud religious studies graduates - won't be able to do anything at all about Islamophobia until there are still Muslims out there who lie about their religion's rules, and call people who disagree with them one-toothed mothers of drug addicts with STD problems.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

"the ethical injunctions of Islam were rarely translated into enforceable laws. Only texts that orthodox theologians, legists, and philosophers (the likes of Al-Ghazali) created were--and continue to be--regarded as the core prescriptive texts of Islam. But Ahmed also makes it clear that this intense misogyny was neither originally nor exclusively Muslim in character, but rather the consequence of a cultural negotiation between Islam and "an urban Middle East with already well-articulated misogynist attitudes and practices":
[B]y licensing polygamy, concubinage, and easy
divorce for men, originally allowed under
different circumstances in a different society,
Islam lent itself to being interpreted as
endorsing and giving religious sanction to a
deeply negative and debased conception of women. "

Islam did license polygamy, concubinage and easy divorce for men, and none of its existing scholars have ever said that these rules aren't applicable anymore. I agree with Ahmed that those were allowed under different circumstances in a different society, but not a single strain of contemporary Muslim scholarship says Islam needs to do away with these rules. These rules aren't a part of cultural practices or tribal customs. I mean they were originally, but they are enshrined in law and in the Quran itself. You occasionally find people who say concubinage is verboten (thank you Mr. Sistani!), and people who say if the laws of your country prohibit polygamy, don't be polygamous (thank you Dr Badawi but he did get a barb in that the West is being intolerant by allowing gays to marry but banning Muslims from more than one wife), but I have never ever seen a single scholar arguing for making divorce for men harder.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Now that you have been proven wrong on the topic of jahiliya & the oath of allegiance because the weight of scholarly opinion standing in contradiction to your opinions, you want to shift topics. Moving those goal posts again, I see. Proof that this rant you have been on is agenda driven, islamophobia driven.

And this is why I called several media outlets. You used DCUM to propagate hate toward Islam by publishing misleading information.

No one except you thinks I've been proven wrong on anything. You're a legend in your own mind.

Right. No one except world renowned religious scholars.

What rant? I simply posted a few paragraphs from her book. Is she ranting?

Dr Ahmed is a world-renowned scholar and she doesn't think pre-Islamic Arabia was all that bad, nor that Islam made life for women SO much better. In fact, she says that in some parts of Arabia, women pre-Islam had a much better life than post-Islam. You want to take it up with her?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

If you deem sexual autonomy as the only measure of expansion of women's rights, then kudos to you as you have made your point. However, most women, particularly Muslim women, do not measure their status by how many men they can sleep with. There are many other, more important factors to consider, as Professor Ahmed points out.

Once again, nice try in attempting to tarnish Islam.

I think being in charge of your sexual decision is important, yes. I also think the ability to select and divorce your husband at will is also very nice, and you must agree Islam imposed limits on women in this - for marriage, for requiring consent of guardian, and for divorce, for making women-initiated divorces dependent on the husband's or the judge's consent.

Islam did not take these two rights away!

Yes, it did.
- A man can initiate a divorce by telling his wife "Talak, talak, talak", just repeating that one word three times, and she has to hit the road. That's "divorce at will" for sure!
- A woman can initiate a divorce, but she doesn't make the decision. Either her husband agrees to it or, if he doesn't agree, she asks a judge to make the decision.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
I look forward to helping the many writers, Imams, Islamic organizations, and nonMuslim media outlets I have now contacted to address the kind of islamophobia your posts exemplify.

After the articles are published, I will post links to them on DCUM with Jeff's permission. You have certainly taken up a lot of my time but it has not been wasted. I should thank you for being the catalyst for such a large scale effort now by so many people to address the problem of islamophobia.

No one is scared of you. Call the UN if you want.

Let's recap how effective you were here, in this little corner of the world. Not one reader of DCUM found your arguments convincing or well-reasoned (if I'm wrong, someone correct me). Not one reader of DCUM left these threads with a better or more favorable idea of Islam because of you. If you wanted to be a good representative for your religion, you failed. You behave poorly and you argue poorly. Is anyone reading these threads more impressed by Islam because of you? What do you think?

And all the Islamic organizations and imams in the world - hell, the entire corps of Al-Azhar and King Saud religious studies graduates - won't be able to do anything at all about Islamophobia until there are still Muslims out there who lie about their religion's rules, and call people who disagree with them one-toothed mothers of drug addicts with STD problems.

NP. No, I didn't find her arguments convincing. In fact, I was a bit shocked by her repeated distortions of what you and other posters said. I'm the poster who wrote about IP addresses, and she twisted my words around on the other thread. I could see for myself how she twisted your words around.

In the end, you two disagree. That's all there is. It doesn't make one of you a great person and the other an Islamophobe.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

If you deem sexual autonomy as the only measure of expansion of women's rights, then kudos to you as you have made your point. However, most women, particularly Muslim women, do not measure their status by how many men they can sleep with. There are many other, more important factors to consider, as Professor Ahmed points out.

Once again, nice try in attempting to tarnish Islam.

I think being in charge of your sexual decision is important, yes. I also think the ability to select and divorce your husband at will is also very nice, and you must agree Islam imposed limits on women in this - for marriage, for requiring consent of guardian, and for divorce, for making women-initiated divorces dependent on the husband's or the judge's consent.

Islam did not take these two rights away!

Yes, it did.
- A man can initiate a divorce by telling his wife "Talak, talak, talak", just repeating that one word three times, and she has to hit the road. That's "divorce at will" for sure!
- A woman can initiate a divorce, but she doesn't make the decision. Either her husband agrees to it or, if he doesn't agree, she asks a judge to make the decision.

To be completely fair, no, she doesn't have to hit the road immediately. There's the whole three months thing.

Also, different schools vary on the divorce procedure - I mean, none take it away, but some do make it more difficult for the man. In Shia Islam, for instance, a man cannot issue irrevocable divorce on the spot. It's only once and then they have to go to mediation, if that doesn't work, one more, and if THAT doesn't work, it's irrevocable. Our Gulfie friends mitigate the threat of divorce at-will by setting ridiculous standards for dowries - one of my SIL's dowry was 50K and a fully furnished house.

You are correct on the woman thing, though. Unless it's in the marriage contract that the woman reserves the right to divorce at will, there is no divorce at will for women comparable to that of men. As Muhammad has allegedly said, "the right to divorce belongs to the one who holds the calf", i.e. the husband.

But women can totally put it in the marriage contract.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Also, different schools vary on the divorce procedure - I mean, none take it away, but some do make it more difficult for the man. In Shia Islam, for instance, a man cannot issue irrevocable divorce on the spot. It's only once and then they have to go to mediation, if that doesn't work, one more, and if THAT doesn't work, it's irrevocable. Our Gulfie friends mitigate the threat of divorce at-will by setting ridiculous standards for dowries - one of my SIL's dowry was 50K and a fully furnished house.

You are correct on the woman thing, though. Unless it's in the marriage contract that the woman reserves the right to divorce at will, there is no divorce at will for women comparable to that of men. As Muhammad has allegedly said, "the right to divorce belongs to the one who holds the calf", i.e. the husband.

But women can totally put it in the marriage contract.

And even Wahhabis are making it more difficult by making triple divorce impossible in one sitting. Meaning, even if the husband says "divorce" three times, it still counts as one divorce. Three pronouncements have to be separated by time as long as it is not more than three months.

[Anonymous]

Temporary “marriages,” called sigheh, are predominately a feature of Shi'ite Islam. In the Islamic Republic of Iran, a man typically has only one permanent wife – although in Sunni Islam, a man can have up to four permanent wives at once – but he can have up to 99 temporary marriages at the same time.

If this sounds like prostitution, you're getting the drift of it. The Arabic name for this union is mut'a, which means “pleasure.” A 48-year-old man named Habib, who had contracted several such unions, told Nadya Labi of Mother Jones his modus operandi: “I do sigheh with women who need financial help. Instead of giving money for charity, I marry them in this way and financially support them.”
One can almost picture the paunchy, balding man approaching teenager girls, saying, Hey, Baby, I'll help you if you help me…. Understandably, most women who agree to such “help” keep their agreements secret out of shame.

To compound matters, the man — and the man alone — may break the relationship at any time, for any reason or no reason.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Temporary “marriages,” called sigheh, are predominately a feature of Shi'ite Islam. In the Islamic Republic of Iran, a man typically has only one permanent wife – although in Sunni Islam, a man can have up to four permanent wives at once – but he can have up to 99 temporary marriages at the same time.

If this sounds like prostitution, you're getting the drift of it. The Arabic name for this union is mut'a, which means “pleasure.” A 48-year-old man named Habib, who had contracted several such unions, told Nadya Labi of Mother Jones his modus operandi: “I do sigheh with women who need financial help. Instead of giving money for charity, I marry them in this way and financially support them.”
One can almost picture the paunchy, balding man approaching teenager girls, saying, Hey, Baby, I'll help you if you help me…. Understandably, most women who agree to such “help” keep their agreements secret out of shame.

To compound matters, the man — and the man alone — may break the relationship at any time, for any reason or no reason.

That's true of traditional Muslim marriages as well - man can terminate at any time, for any reason. Don't know why you decided to pick on mut'a marriages. Those just expire when time passes. Temporary marriages may very well can have their time and place - for instance, for women who aren't interested in traditional marital arrangements, women who don't want to risk custody of children, women who simply don't want a lifelong union. Used intelligently, they can be a tool of sexual freedom for women and men.

Teenage girls actually very rarely enter into those as mut'a marriages tend to be the province of more mature women.

Iranian law on polygamy does not limit men to one permanent wife.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
One thing that is abundantly clear is that you have never read the book. I'm going to quote passages from her book because I have it. Not now but later when I have more time. You google and cut and paste and don't even understand what you are posting sometimes. This is because you are entirely agenda driven, islamophobia driven. Leila Ahmed has clearly stated:

"the ethical injunctions of Islam were rarely translated into enforceable laws. Only texts that orthodox theologians, legists, and philosophers (the likes of Al-Ghazali) created were--and continue to be--regarded as the core prescriptive texts of Islam. But Ahmed also makes it clear that this intense misogyny was neither originally nor exclusively Muslim in character, but rather the consequence of a cultural negotiation between Islam and "an urban Middle East with already well-articulated misogynist attitudes and practices":
[B]y licensing polygamy, concubinage, and easy
divorce for men, originally allowed under
different circumstances in a different society,
Islam lent itself to being interpreted as
endorsing and giving religious sanction to a
deeply negative and debased conception of women. "

The vast majority of scholars, not only Leila Ahmed, simply stand in direct contradiction to your opinions, largely based on google research and fueled by intense hate and gross misconception.

Leila Ahmed was quite clear about the demonization of Pre-Islamic Arabia, and romantization of improvements that Islam brought to women. If you have any questions about her characterization of these periods, or her comparison of Khadija and Aisha, take it up with her. Or, if you think I faked these paragraphs, do let us know.

Anonymous wrote:
I look forward to helping the many writers, Imams, Islamic organizations, and nonMuslim media outlets I have now contacted to address the kind of islamophobia your posts exemplify.

After the articles are published, I will post links to them on DCUM with Jeff's permission. You have certainly taken up a lot of my time but it has not been wasted. I should thank you for being the catalyst for such a large scale effort now by so many people to address the problem of islamophobia.

No one is scared of you. Call the UN if you want.

Let's recap how effective you were here, in this little corner of the world. Not one reader of DCUM found your arguments convincing or well-reasoned (if I'm wrong, someone correct me). Not one reader of DCUM left these threads with a better or more favorable idea of Islam because of you. If you wanted to be a good representative for your religion, you failed. You behave poorly and you argue poorly. Is anyone reading these threads more impressed by Islam because of you? What do you think?

And all the Islamic organizations and imams in the world - hell, the entire corps of Al-Azhar and King Saud religious studies graduates - won't be able to do anything at all about Islamophobia until there are still Muslims out there who lie about their religion's rules, and call people who disagree with them one-toothed mothers of drug addicts with STD problems.

No one will care to write an article about my retaliatory comment. I think you know that. Islamophobia, well that's article worthy, news worthy. And writers seem quite intrigued with the idea that its part of an organized effort. That is very news worthy.

You will be the anonymous face of islamophobia in articles and your posts will probably be used, right before quotes from scholars from prestigious institutions such as Cambridge, Oxford, and Harvard contradicting you. The goal will be to shed light on the new face of islamophobia but it will inevitably make a mockery of your posts. I apologize for that but this topic is too important and your posts illustrate all too well the prejudice and discrimination Muslims are up against.

As for persuading DCUMers, that was never my goal. The goal was to correct your half truths and lies.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
I look forward to helping the many writers, Imams, Islamic organizations, and nonMuslim media outlets I have now contacted to address the kind of islamophobia your posts exemplify.

After the articles are published, I will post links to them on DCUM with Jeff's permission. You have certainly taken up a lot of my time but it has not been wasted. I should thank you for being the catalyst for such a large scale effort now by so many people to address the problem of islamophobia.

No one is scared of you. Call the UN if you want.

Let's recap how effective you were here, in this little corner of the world. Not one reader of DCUM found your arguments convincing or well-reasoned (if I'm wrong, someone correct me). Not one reader of DCUM left these threads with a better or more favorable idea of Islam because of you. If you wanted to be a good representative for your religion, you failed. You behave poorly and you argue poorly. Is anyone reading these threads more impressed by Islam because of you? What do you think?

And all the Islamic organizations and imams in the world - hell, the entire corps of Al-Azhar and King Saud religious studies graduates - won't be able to do anything at all about Islamophobia until there are still Muslims out there who lie about their religion's rules, and call people who disagree with them one-toothed mothers of drug addicts with STD problems.

NP. No, I didn't find her arguments convincing. In fact, I was a bit shocked by her repeated distortions of what you and other posters said. I'm the poster who wrote about IP addresses, and she twisted my words around on the other thread. I could see for myself how she twisted your words around.

In the end, you two disagree. That's all there is. It doesn't make one of you a great person and the other an Islamophobe.

Were you the one who said I was getting Jeff to help me get IP addresses? I asked you to reproduce the post where I said that. Where's the post??

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
Were you the one who said I was getting Jeff to help me get IP addresses? I asked you to reproduce the post where I said that. Where's the post??

Wow, you lie shamelessly! You lie through your teeth! Moreover, your lying doesn't just involve your completely improbably fantasies about Oxbridge and Harvard. No, you lie about things that actually happened on DCUM threads, which everybody can go back and check.

Let's look at this particular case.

You claimed that people said you were asking for IP addresses. That was you putting words into other peoples' mouths, and you've done it twice now (on this issue - apparently you've done it many more times on other issues). I'm the one that answered you, yesterday, to say that nobody thinks you asked the moderator for IP addresses. Basically, we don't think you asked the moderator for IP addresses because ... we don't think you know enough about IP addresses to even ask the moderator for them.

Here's the answer you were given yesterday, from the Biblical Mysteries thread, at 11/5 at 6:47:

Anonymous wrote:No. You never brought up IPs because apparently you never understood anything about them. Otherwise you would never have claimed, as you did repeatedly, that the moderator was ready to help you figure out which "unnamed Islamophobe" oeganizations were posting here. If you had understood IPs you could have saved yourself a lot of embarrassment.

Proof that you don't know anything about IP addresses is that once they were explained to you, yesterday, you completely stopped claiming that posters' identities were going to be revealed. Now you've switched gears completely, and instead you're going with this laughable nonsense about how the "anonymous face of Islamophobia" on a parenting site will be discussed at Oxbridge and Harvard. As if.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
No one will care to write an article about my retaliatory comment. I think you know that. Islamophobia, well that's article worthy, news worthy. And writers seem quite intrigued with the idea that its part of an organized effort. That is very news worthy.

You will be the anonymous face of islamophobia in articles and your posts will probably be used, right before quotes from scholars from prestigious institutions such as Cambridge, Oxford, and Harvard contradicting you. The goal will be to shed light on the new face of islamophobia but it will inevitably make a mockery of your posts. I apologize for that but this topic is too important and your posts illustrate all too well the prejudice and discrimination Muslims are up against.

As for persuading DCUMers, that was never my goal. The goal was to correct your half truths and lies.

Well, now you've done it. If there was even one DCUM reader left who still thought you were even remotely trustworthy, you disabused her of that notion. You've exposed the extent to which you're willing to lie shamelessly in this bizarre attempt to score points in whatever you're playing.

A disagreement is a disagreement, and Oxbridge, Cambridge and Harvard all know that. You disagree about pre-Islamic history, and nobody but, but nobody, cares except you. Your calling other posters gap-toothed mini-skirt wearing grannies with STDs and drug-addled kids is just icing on the cake of your thorough-going ridiculousness.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
No one will care to write an article about my retaliatory comment. I think you know that. Islamophobia, well that's article worthy, news worthy. And writers seem quite intrigued with the idea that its part of an organized effort. That is very news worthy.

Any efforts to find an organization - rather than an educated kaffirah - behind my posts will fall flat on their face. I think you know that.

Anonymous wrote:
You will be the anonymous face of islamophobia in articles and your posts will probably be used, right before quotes from scholars from prestigious institutions such as Cambridge, Oxford, and Harvard contradicting you. The goal will be to shed light on the new face of islamophobia but it will inevitably make a mockery of your posts. I apologize for that but this topic is too important and your posts illustrate all too well the prejudice and discrimination Muslims are up against.

If it's anonymous, who cares? It won't do a whit to stop me.

Most Muslims in our circle never faced any discrimination here. That's probably because they never call anyone evangelicalcrusaders with porn addict children. But what do I know?

Anonymous wrote:
As for persuading DCUMers, that was never my goal. The goal was to correct your half truths and lies.

Then why said "it's clear to DCUMers" when it's not?

You did absolutely nothing to correct me.

[Anonymous]

Recap of what Dr Ahmed actually said:

“Islamic civilization developed a construct of history that labeled the pre-Islamic period the Age of Ignorance and projected Islam as the sole source of all that was civilized – and used that construct so effectively in its rewriting of history that the peoples of the Middle East lost all knowledge of the past civilizations of the religion. Obviously that construct was ideologically serviceable, successful concealing, among other things, the fact that in some cultures of the Middle East women had been considerably better off before the rise of Islam than afterwards.”