UK

Freedom....

Women should be free to make the choice to practice Sharia or not. Unfortunately, family members are forcing their beliefs on women living under their control.  At those times, the state has to protect women from their own families. 

I don't think Sharia law should be accepted in the West.  Those who wish to practice this should return to their homelands where such practices are accepted.  The practices of honor killings are horrific...  No Western nation should allow such murders.  Where's the compassion and forgiving under Sharia.. It seems to be the harshest of all religious practices.

No one has the right to live in another country.  You are a guest who must follow the rules.  At least, that's what I am told when I protest the rules Iran would put on my head if I just want to visit.

Cultural relativism - this

Cultural relativism - this era's fascism
Maryam Namazie
Speech given at a forum on women’s rights
November 28, 1998
Toronto, Canada

* In Germany, in August 1997, an 18-year-old woman was burnt to death by her father for refusing to marry the man he had chosen. A German court gave him a reduced sentence, saying he was practicing his culture and religion.

* In Iran, women and girls are forcibly veiled under threat of imprisonment and lashes, and cultural relativists say that it is their religion and must be respected.

* In Holland, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs states that Iran’s prisons are “satisfactory for third world standards," allowing the forcible return of asylum seekers.

Cultural relativism serves these crimes. It legitimizes and maintains savagery. It says that people’s rights are dependent on their nationality, religion, and culture. It says that the human rights of someone born in Iran, Iraq, or Afghanistan are different from those of someone born in the United States, Canada or Sweden.

Cultural relativists say Iranian society is Muslim, implying that people choose to live the way they are forced to. It's as if there are no differences in beliefs in Iran, no struggles, no communists, no socialists, and no freedom-lovers. If so, why have 150,000 people been executed for opposing the Islamic Republic of Iran? If it’s the entire society's culture and religion, why does the Islamic regime need such extensive tools for repression? If it’s people’s beliefs, why does the regime control their private lives - from their sexual activities, to what video they watch, to what music they listen to? If the entire society is Muslim, why did Zoleykhah Kadkhoda enter a voluntary sexual relationship for which she was buried in a ditch and stoned? If it is people's culture, why did the residents of Bukan revolt against the stoning and save her life? Why are thousands of women rounded up in the streets for “improper” veiling if its their culture and religion? How come, after two decades of terror and brutality, the universities are still not Islamic, according to an official of the regime? Though it's untrue, even if every person living in Iran had reactionary beliefs, it still wouldn’t be acceptable. If everyone believes in the superiority of their race, does that make it okay?

Cultural relativists say that we must respect people's culture and religion, however despicable. This is absurd and calls for the respect of savagery. Yes, human beings are worthy of respect but not all beliefs must be respected. If culture allows a woman to be mutilated and killed to save the family “honor,” it cannot be excused. In the Islamic Republic of Iran, religion rules and has become the mass murderer of people. If religion says that women who disobey should be beaten, that flogging is acceptable, and that women are deficient, it must be condemned and opposed.

The struggle against misogynist and reactionary governments is inseparable from the struggle against reactionary and misogynist beliefs. Of course individuals have the right to their own beliefs, however offensive, but freedom-lovers are duty bound to expose and condemn reactionary beliefs and relegate them to the garbage cans of history.

Cultural relativists go further to say that universal human rights are a western concept. How come when it comes to using the telephone or a car, the mullah does not say it is western and incompatible with an Islamist society? How come when it comes to better exploiting the working class and making profits, technological gains are universal? But when it comes to universal human rights, they become western. Even if rights are western, it is absurd to say that others' are not worthy of them. In fact, though, rights are gains forcibly taken by the working class and progressive social movements. Therefore, any gain or right obtained anywhere is a gain and a right for all humanity.

Some, even among the "left" say that exposing reactionary beliefs serves racism. Opposing the rape of a nine year old girl who is forcibly married does not serve racism. Opposing the sexual abuse of a child even though the Islamic Republic of Iran's court says the father was forced to abuse the child because his wife did not satisfy him, does not serve racism - just like opposing anti-Semitism doesn't make one a Zionist. Culture for the sake of culture is not sacred. Racism and fascism also have their own cultures. A culture that cannot defend human beings to live a better life is worthless.

Struggling for universal human rights means condemning and disrespecting reactionary beliefs. The struggle against dominant reactionary ideas is a struggle against the ideas of the ruling class. After all, the ruling class must justify the barbarism of capitalism. It must make the intolerable seem tolerable and natural. It must create differences to facilitate profit. Cultural relativism serves that purpose. The idea of difference has always been the fundamental principle of a racist agenda. The defeat of Nazism and its biological theory of difference largely discredited racial superiority. The racism behind it, however, found another more acceptable form of expression for this era. Instead of expression in racial terms, difference is now portrayed in cultural terms. Cultural relativism is this era’s fascism. Cultural relativists are defenders of this era's holocausts.

In an era of unprecedented barbarity we must defend the universal rights of human beings who daily hope for freedom and equality. Though a better life is only possible when this world is turned right side up, anyone who respects humanity must immediately struggle for the abolition of all backward and reactionary beliefs which are incompatible with human freedom and progress and a secular and modern society for all.
//www.maryamnamazie.com/articles/cultural_rel...

maria cerankowski you sound like Rosi T!!!???

It does not matter who you are ,My question to you is that :Do you think a muslim woman would chose to be stoned ,or have a preferance for her husband to have 3 more wives,or her daughter being sanitized by hounor killing???

Really,you said you are a feminist!!!!!For women rights!!!! do you think she would choose sharia law????
Please honey, take your nose out of muslim women's rights!!!!

Why would Archbishop want Sharia law????

To me it is not anti racism,or wanting to have a multicultural society.

The reson is plain and simple,HE WANTS IT BECAUSE HE MISSES DARK AGES OF EUROPE AND THEIR POWER.

I think that Archbishop may kind of tingle by the tought of having the same power and status as the Islamic clergy.And he is testing waters!!!
Otherwise no one in free society would want to bring stoning and houner killing back.

Azar Majedi is an anti-Semite / anti-Semitic communist

Azar Majedi called me "perverted" because I pointed out, respectfully, that her values do not fit political liberalism.

It had occurred to me that her views are similar to the type of anti-religion totalitarianism practiced in the Soviet Union.

Having now researched Majedi, I see that indeed Azar Majed is a communist and an anti-Semite. Of course, not all communists are bigoted extremists. Some communists have humanitarian tendencies. But it appears that Azar Majedi is an anti-Semitic communist who would have felt most at home in the era of Stanlin.

I would still recommend that Azar Majedi read some Locke, Rawls, and Jefferson to learn about the concepts of freedom and the rights of minorities.

M. C.

P.S. Anybody who calls for the wiping out of Jewish tradition is an anti-Semite. Therefore, Azar Majedi is an anti-Semite.

About Misogynist Maria Cerankowski

S(he) is indeed a perverted misogynist person, promoting oppressive patriarchal laws for women. There are some "minorities" who are for slavery. Should we allow them to practice slavery because we need to be pluralistic? I think not.

Islamic laws are based on the concept of woman as half of a man, a slave, a sexual object, an inferior and irrational being. No civilized society should allow any of its citizens to have the OPTION of being humiliated and degraded, even when it's CHOSEN by a minority of masochistic individuals such as Maria Cerankowski.

Liberalism & Religious & Cultural Minorities

What Azar Majidi is proposing is, in effect, totalitarianism. This is the sort of totalitarianism practiced under the Soviet Union, i.e. it is of the atheistic anti-religious variety. It leaves absolutely zero latitude for minorities.

Liberalism is in large part about the rights of minorities. To learn more about Western liberalism, please refer to the works of John Stewart Mill, John Locke, and Rawls.

Even traditionalist, closed societies (like the Ottoman millet system) gave minorities more latitude than Azar Majidi is willing to give them.

Maria Cerankowski

I believe Muslim/Jewish/etc. women and men who wish to live under
conservative laws of personal status (marriage, divorce, inheritance)
should be given the opportunity.

Why? Why should they have an "opportunity" to have a set of laws that is not in compliance with the norms of the society they live in?

In the West, when we talk about "Muslim family law," we aren't talking
about forcing it on entire communities. What we're talking about is
giving the people the OPTION to have their dispute adjudicated based on
a legal system different from that of the dominant culture. If a man or
woman who doesn't like that option, it won't be forced on him/her. This
is a win-win situation.

No, actually it's not, because if "the community" decides that it wants to have Sharia law and a woman decides she doesn't wnat to comply with it, her chances of ever finding a husband are very slim. Therefore, she will "voluntarily" comply. Won't she? And before you suggest taht she can leave the community and marry somebody from the oputside, you need to know that Muslim women are not permitted to marry non-Muslim men, so leaving the community isn't really an option for most.

You seem to be living in a perfect world where everything always goes the way it should.

When Europe was more

When Europe was more priest-ridden than it is now, it was very like much of the modern Islamic world. It is a deep tragedy that we have not all moved forward together. The only way this can be achieved is through secularism - the first plank of which is the absolute protection of the right to faith, and the second is the insistence that faith remain excluded from the public sphere - legislation and the law should not have a religious test ever, not for those involved in it and not for its precepts.

Canadian Women's Rights

Canadian Women's Rights Activist Homa Arjomand says Rowan Williams should quit!
Homa Arjomand is the founder and coordinator of the International Campaign Against Shariah Courts.
AKI reported today on Homa's thoughts on Rowan Williams:

Islamic courts must be be ruled out in Britain and other Western countries if the democratic rights of all their citizens are to be safeguarded, Iranian born activist Homa Arjomand, told Adnkronos International (AKI).

Homa Arjomand spearheaded a successful campaign to end faith-based arbitration in Canada.

She strongly disagreed with remarks made earlier in February by the head of the Anglican Church, the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, who claimed that Islamic (Sharia) courts in Britain seemed "inevitable" and could aid "social cohesion".

Arjomand told AKI that adopting Sharia courts, promoting Islamic schools and Islamic centres would be giving in to political Islam.

She said such courts would deny immigrant women equality with men and increase discrimination towards them, as well as the religious and racial segregation of minorities.

"It is the state's duty to look after the well-being of all citizens, including women and children from so-called Islamic communities," said Arjomand, who is a secular Muslim.

The failed experience of faith-based courts in Canada , where Arjomand lives, demonstrated the need for a single legal system that treats all individuals equally, she said.
Homa Arjomand and members of No Shariah Organization successfully defeated the Shariah Courts movement in Canada.

//www.nosharia.com/
//www.nosharia.com/sp-homa-metrac-28-10-2004....
//www.nosharia.com/about.htm

Catholic courts do not hold

Catholic courts do not hold sway over the secular courts, neither do the jewish ones nor Hindu ones. Introduction of sharia as equal with secular courts does not make sense in Western Country because majority of sharia family rules clash with the secular law present in England.

Introducing sharia also means pressure on muslim men and women to conform to the rules of Islam and geting further from democratic laws, secular institutions and secular principles prevailing in the land.
Catholic adoption agencies are not the part of the government however sharia jurisdiction will be part of the law for English subjects.
There is a large difference between private adoption agencies and the legal courts. One is not equal to the other.

Pretty soon, the Catholic churches and Jewish temples will require their own courts within the secular system. It is a slippery slope.

An Iranian man and his buddy

An Iranian man and his buddy stoned the man's 14 year-old daughter to death after suspecting that she was having a relationship.
AKI reported:

A man known as Sharif has reportedly stoned his fourteen-year-old daughter to death in southeastern Iran because for allegedly having a relationship with a man.

Sharif's wife reported him to police after he and a friend killed the girl in Zahedan, capital of Baluchistan province.

Sharif showed no sign of remorse, telling police who interrogated him: "I suspected that my daughter had a relationship with a man and I had to stone her to death as she had besmirched my honour."

"I had no other choice," he said, telling police how he had carried out the stoning.

//www.adnkronos.com/AKI/English/Politics/?id=...

The Shari'a in the West: an Option.

I believe Muslim/Jewish/etc. women and men who wish to live under conservative laws of personal status (marriage, divorce, inheritance) should be given the opportunity. I'm a feminist myself, but I don't like the idea of shoving feminism down the throat of unappreciative individuals. Let people live as they wish to live.

In the West, when we talk about "Muslim family law," we aren't talking about forcing it on entire communities. What we're talking about is giving the people the OPTION to have their dispute adjudicated based on a legal system different from that of the dominant culture. If a man or woman who doesn't like that option, it won't be forced on him/her. This is a win-win situation.

The analogy to this is the fact that Jews and Christians in certain Muslim countries are allowed to apply their own laws of personal status and use alcohol, even though it's forbidden to the larger society.

In short, I support pluralism, and I oppose the tyranny of liberalism, which would be a perversion of liberalism. Liberalism is fundamentally about pluralism anyway.