Afghani rape victim freed from jail, on condition she marry rapist

Christianity has had 1500 years to "defeat" Islam by counterargument.

That's why I say this is a political matter, not a religious one.

 

We could probably start right here at home. In both the US and Canada, polygamy among Muslims is being winked at.

This should end. Now. It's not just illegal, it's de facto subjugation.

The same goes for the Mormon splinter groups in Utah and Arizona.

And, we need to protect young girls from being forced into arranged marriages with much older men. It's slavery.

 

Right. So, let's not give them a religious exemption.

Let's confront it on political grounds, on a human rights basis.

Instead, we're drawing up rules of engagement that favors and protects their savagery against women.

It's like when we don't return fire from a Mosque because it's a religious site.

Well, once you fire at us from it, it is no longer a sanctuary.

Once you murder, rape, and disfigure women on the basis of religion, your religion deserves no respect or recognition as such in these matters.

 

Yeah. See, there's the problem. If you address this as some sort of enraged "crusade," you succeed only in prolonging the agonies of the very people you seek to help. All cultures defend their holy books.

You want to embargo Saudi (or Iranian or Iraqi or Bahraini) oil until their women are allowed to vote and drive and own property? Have at it. That's how political/cultural/economic pressure works. But understand what it is you're actually suggesting - and the intensity and scale of political will it takes to succeed.

 

Yeah, it would suck.

But, we're their biggest market. They need us too.

Same thing with China.

And, we have a lot of domestic energy, and could produce more.

How long could they go with out us as a customer? How long could they go if the rest of the Western World joined in?

You might not be able to cut 'em off tomorrow, but we could be working towards it; preparing for it; building support for it.

We're doing none of it.

And, we can stop patronizing them. We don't have to send the NASA Administrator to Saudi to tell them how good they are at science.

We don't have to hold the Saudi King's hand.

We don't have to sell them weapons, or commercial airplanes.

We don't have to give their sons visas to study here, or allow them to compete in the Olympics, Soccer World Cup, or Cricket World Cup. (Is that what they call it in Cricket?)

We don't have to allow them to serve on the Human Rights Commission, let alone allow them membership in the UN.

Take away their playgrounds. Let them satisfy their need to whore around and drink in Beirut or Dubai, but give them visas to come here and party.

Don't let them come to the Cleveland Clinic, or Mayo when they need medical attention.

 

And if the libs would let us drill or open the pipeline from Canada, we could tell them to drink their oil.

 

There is no poltical will to do little more than a half-assed approach, like the war in Afghanistan is and Iraq was.

 

To respond to much earlier posts, no, of course I don't feel that these things are right. My point is that you can't just go telling another culture that they're wrong and you're right, because all they have to do is counter that they're right and you're wrong, an argument to which "well, obviously I'm right" isn't really a riposte.

That said, I think an excellent place to start would to stop basing laws and moral codes on books of fairy tales, and let's see where that gets us. (In a further response, the fact that Western ethics are based on the Bible doesn't mean that we wouldn't have worked the stuff out otherwise anyway. The Bible is merely the most readily accessible codification of those things.)

 

Also, people are Afghans. Afghani is a currency.

 

Or, you know, not.

 

Unless you missed it, we actually kicked communism's ass.

 

If you're implying that moral codes come from "fairy tales," I would counter that there are things that are wrong under a theocracy or an atheistic society. Murder, for example. Stealing. Or subjecting women. Or killing people because they're gay. These are absolutes. You can be a moral person and not have any religious convictions. As a previous poster said, there are things which you can tell societies or countries, "that's wrong ... stop doing it." If you're taking about how they dress, what they eat, customs, etc., fine. Don't dictate. But there are wrongs and sins that transgress cultural differences.

Liberals, for some reason, are deathly afraid to tell Muslim countries that they probably shouldn't stone women or behead gays. But they're not above forcing a politician to resign or quit a race because they've had affairs or propositioned women (unless the last name is Clinton), or told a gay joke.