Muslima wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The topic of THIS thread is NOT "TELL ME ABOUT ISLAM."

I do not want to know much more about Islam other than the last two questions that I asked you that you simply cannot seem to answer when you seem to be so verbose about so much else.

You're very defensive, Muslima, they are simple questions. Speak the truth. Is that not something the Koran commands you to do among so many other things?

Did you even bother to read the opening post of this thread?

As far as your questions are concerned, they have been treated over and over, believe me, they are very "basic" questions. No need to go on and on about why I didn't answer as it is some sort of sacrilege. I can't keep repeating myself over and over. Like I told you in a previous post if you didn't get it then, you won't get it now. Repeating/doing the same thing over and over expecting a different outcome is the definition of insanity, I choose to stay sane!

Anonymous wrote:The topic of THIS thread is NOT "TELL ME ABOUT ISLAM."

I do not want to know much more about Islam other than the last two questions that I asked you that you simply cannot seem to answer when you seem to be so verbose about so much else.

You're very defensive, Muslima, they are simple questions. Speak the truth. Is that not something the Koran commands you to do among so many other things?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Muslima and friend, here's some friendly advice. You two need to drop these threads and let them sink to the bottom if the forum. Stop posting. Stop starting new threads with the mind-boggling idea that you can "spin" an old thread that's still up and that anybody can (and should) check against your spin. Just stop, and let this die down.

Come back in 6 months to a new audience. Then, try things differently. Stop with the gratuitous insults, like calling someone with questions a 9-year-old in your post of 9:24 above. Please, for the love of a God, drop the dawwah (proselytizing) tactics of spinning out half-truths and attacking anybody who questions you.

Being completely honest about your faith is the way to build trust. Several posters on this thread have suggested ways to build trust, such as being completely forthcoming from the start, and then talking about what these rules mean to you and why you don't see them as restrictive in your life. Or, talk about Muslim women who defy the easy stereotype. Trust, baby.

I have a newfound interest thanks to my christian crusader/evangelical/islamophobes, and that is to help dispel myths about TRUE ISLAM. I will not only publish youtube links on DCUM but will seek nonMuslim publications to publish articles on real Islam.

Thank you btw for providing this incentive.

That's a fabulous idea. Don't forget to end all your writings with "and if you don't agree with me, you're a christian crusader evangelical islamophobe." Be sure to never capitalize christian.

Anonymous wrote:

Muslima wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP, I agree with you in some ways. However, I do think it is a disservice to call people islamaphobes. You do agree that For a long time now, the extremists have tainted the Muslim religion into things that it may not totally represent. And I'm not just talking about ISIS. I'm talking about the treatment of women, the stonings, the fact that i had a patient last week who wouldn't talk unless her husband gave her permission to. I like to think I'm educated enough not to view all Muslims in a negative light, but you also have to understand why so many do.

Instead of finding people who say Muslims aren't all the negative things as they are depicted to be, you may have a better shot of finding examples of people who go against the stereotype. Not just scholarly articles or people talking.

The thing is, that woman's husband could bring you a dozen rulings from decreed sheikhs explaining, with full chain of evidence, that what his wife did was proper and correct.

I understand that. My point is that it is not islamaphobic to think that is so incredibly backwards that when a woman shows up in the ER with obvious pain, she couldn't tell me how bad her pain was without her husbands permission. It is not Isis you are fighting against with why people think Muslims are "bad" it's more like the examples that you see of how they treat women. And I don't think it makes me an islamaphobic to say I was very disturbed by the dynamic I saw between the two of them or that I think the treatment of women who've been raped is backwards and disgusting.

What I think is backwards is for you to think that a religion of 1.6 Billion people won't allow women to speak to a physician without their husband's permission. This is the kind of narrative that serves nothing but to dissipate more stereotypes about the alpha Muslim man and submissive muslim woman. For crying out loud, one of the youngest doctors in the world today is a 20 year old Muslim woman, I doubt she waits for her husband's permission before consulting with her patients. The Qur’an itself is not only egalitarian but decidedly anti-patriarchal, as is Islam as it was practiced by our Prophet SAW, who was in many ways a feminist. Whenever Muslim women have been oppressed, it was due to patriarchal laws that have no place in Islam. Since the Qur’an was revealed to a patriarchy and has been interpreted a lot by adherents of patriarchy since its revelation, it is the readings of the Qur’an and the interpretations by patriarchal Muslims that appear to be oppressive, not the Qur’an itself, whose teachings are neither framed by nor concerned with patriarchy, as proven by its strongly egalitarian essence and emphasis of equality & justice !

OP here. My sister is a physician.. My brother in law is a surgeon. My husband is also a physician. My sister and I do not need our husband's permission to speak to anyone. EVER. All of them speak to both women and men alike. I have been in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and India. I assure you, if you want to find extremism in Islam in those countries you will. There may be a few immigrants in this country who are also extremists. But this is not Islam.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Because the equality that Muslima speaks of is in the fairness and justice provided by the entire system, whereas you christian crusader/evangelical/islamophobes being of the western mindset focus on individual equality rights.

And here, ladies and gentlemen, is the real gauge of the level of intellectual discourse.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Muslima and friend, here's some friendly advice. You two need to drop these threads and let them sink to the bottom if the forum. Stop posting. Stop starting new threads with the mind-boggling idea that you can "spin" an old thread that's still up and that anybody can (and should) check against your spin. Just stop, and let this die down.

Come back in 6 months to a new audience. Then, try things differently. Stop with the gratuitous insults, like calling someone with questions a 9-year-old in your post of 9:24 above. Please, for the love of a God, drop the dawwah (proselytizing) tactics of spinning out half-truths and attacking anybody who questions you.

Being completely honest about your faith is the way to build trust. Several posters on this thread have suggested ways to build trust, such as being completely forthcoming from the start, and then talking about what these rules mean to you and why you don't see them as restrictive in your life. Or, talk about Muslim women who defy the easy stereotype. Trust, baby.

I have a newfound interest thanks to my christian crusader/evangelical/islamophobes, and that is to help dispel myths about TRUE ISLAM. I will not only publish youtube links on DCUM but will seek nonMuslim publications to publish articles on real Islam.

Thank you btw for providing this incentive.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Because the equality that Muslima speaks of is in the fairness and justice provided by the entire system, whereas you christian crusader/evangelical/islamophobes being of the western mindset focus on individual equality rights.

And here, ladies and gentlemen, is the real gauge of the level of intellectual discourse.

Anonymous wrote:Muslima, disagreeing with you is NOT the same as Islamophobia and racism. Most posters on that thread were very respectful, and certainly Mohammed got called a pedophile fewer times than you guys called Mary a 'porn queen" (direct quote).

You are apparently angry about several types of challenges you faced on that thread:

1. Requests for statistics to back up your claims about converts,
2. Clarifications to your simplified presentation of Islam (eg, your claim that Islam "offers captives asylum" neglected to mention the Quranically sanctioned rape of female captives),
3. Challenges to your personal interpretations of various Islamic rules (selective use of hadith and your position on sharia) coupled with the suggestion that you may be out of step with eminent scholars, and
4. Readers simply didn't find your explanations convincing, e.g. that various rules about women are for our own good.

These challenges DO NOT amount to "racist Islamophobia." People disagreeing with you or failing to find your explanations convincing is NOT "racist Islamophobia."

You were warned several times on that thread about your use of ad hominems, your repeated recourse to personal insults instead of answering hard questions. This thread is in the same vein: contentless, with lots of insults.

Anonymous wrote:

Because the equality that Muslima speaks of is in the fairness and justice provided by the entire system, whereas you christian crusader/evangelical/islamophobes being of the western mindset focus on individual equality rights.

Anonymous wrote:Muslima and friend, here's some friendly advice. You two need to drop these threads and let them sink to the bottom if the forum. Stop posting. Stop starting new threads with the mind-boggling idea that you can "spin" an old thread that's still up and that anybody can (and should) check against your spin. Just stop, and let this die down.

Come back in 6 months to a new audience. Then, try things differently. Stop with the gratuitous insults, like calling someone with questions a 9-year-old in your post of 9:24 above. Please, for the love of a God, drop the dawwah (proselytizing) tactics of spinning out half-truths and attacking anybody who questions you.

Being completely honest about your faith is the way to build trust. Several posters on this thread have suggested ways to build trust, such as being completely forthcoming from the start, and then talking about what these rules mean to you and why you don't see them as restrictive in your life. Or, talk about Muslim women who defy the easy stereotype. Trust, baby.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Reformatting. Muslima, from your post on this thread of 9/5 23:03:

Muslima wrote: What I think is backwards is for you to think that a religion of 1.6 Billion people won't allow women to speak to a physician without their husband's permission. This is the kind of narrative that serves nothing but to reinforce more stereotypes about the alpha Muslim man and submissive muslim woman. For crying out loud, one of the youngest doctors in the world today is a 20 year old Muslim woman, I doubt she waits for her husband's permission before consulting with her patients. The Qur’an itself is not only egalitarian but decidedly anti-patriarchal, as is Islam as it was practiced by our Prophet SAW, who was in many ways a feminist. Whenever Muslim women have been oppressed, it was due to patriarchal laws that have no place in Islam. Since the Qur’an was revealed to a patriarchy and has been interpreted a lot by adherents of patriarchy since its revelation, it is the readings of the Qur’an and the interpretations by patriarchal Muslims that appear to be oppressive, not the Qur’an itself, whose teachings are neither framed by nor concerned with patriarchy, as proven by its strongly egalitarian essence and emphasis of equality & justice !

What's in bold is exactly the type of statement that got you into trouble on that other thread. You make broad assertions like this, and then other posters need to lay out the facts. For example, that a Muslim man can divorce his wife by simply repeating the word "talak" three times but that she has to go before a court to ask for her divorce. Or that a Muslim woman inherits 1/2 of what her brother inherits. We never even got into veiling and how a husband may discipline a disobedient wife. All of these things are in the Quran itself, and as such they are the unchangeable words of God, but needless to say, the picture you paint never includes such things.

You need to spell out the truth yourself, instead of forcing others to do it, so that your readers can decide whether they think this meets their definitions of "equality" and "feminism." At a minimum, you need to be careful with words like "equality" and "feminism," which are freighted with meaning here in the US. Instead, you practically force others to clarify your statements and then, when they do so, you respond with flowery rhetoric. Then when we fail to agree with your flowery statements and logic, you complain about "circular debates," and finally you and that other poster end up calling everybody "Islamophobes."

Isam does not purport to promote equality, it PROMOTES JUSTICE. There is no dignity in a divorcee kicked out or cheated on but who fights and begs in court for sometimes yrs for spousal support; Islam commands male relatives to support her. That is the only reason girls get half the inheritance than boys, because that addl money is to be used to support women in their family. Why does this upset you so much? Women after divorce in America are often in financial hardship, many jobs for women pay much less and the islamic system in its purest state is designed to address this kind of institutional discrimination. C'mon, even my nine yr old gets the logic in this.

Then why does Muslima keep using words like "equality" and "egalitarian," for example in the post right above? Are you saying she doesn't understand her own religion? The alternative, as a nine-year-old would understand, is that she's deliberately trying to deceive.