UK Women & Islam: The rise and rise of the convert

Yes, just as a mature man can but why the "nice"?

The fact is that most UK women converts to Islam do so because they have a Muslim boyfriend/husband and the inequality of the religion. For most of the "genuine" converts I think they are at a stage in their lives when they are susceptible or for one or another reason haven't developed a healthy critical faculty.

 

I would assume people convert to Islam for the same reasons that they convert to any religion.either for love (whatever that is), convenience or belief.

And for much the same reasons that they become agnostics, atheists and all other not really religions.

I call them not really religions, because it appears that those who do not believe in any of the organised religions and sects which have been around for centuries , are just as passionate, and often as irrational, about their disbelief as any religious person.

Everybody appears to need to believe in something...even if that something is disbelief.

 

How would you identify a someone who didn't need to believe in your "something"?

 

So you believe in nothing at all...your mind is a complete vacuum and you have no opinions? Opinions are really beliefs.

All beliefs are not the kind of beliefs which cause wars, but I suppose if you believe that a country is on the cusp of producing WMD, despite no evidence, they can....but they can be and often are those which cause arguments on forums like this one........or those which cause riots against the financial system.

You may not "believe" in what you posit for any longer than it takes to write the opinion down....but while you write it down.you believe in it...even if that belief is simply that it will cause an argument.

Political affiliation is belief as well.....it may be a result of the belief that you deserve to keep more of your money, the belief it is the best for the country, the belief it will control immigration..but all things you believe which forms your opinion of which party to support.

Beliefs are just things you think, for whatever reason (and the reason may well be a belief in its own right) with which some agree and others don't........same as with religion. Doesn't make any beliefs true..except in your own mind, and those of others who think the same way.

Some people only believe what can be proven with fact......others believe according to that days media headline. But wouldn't forums be boring if people didn't at least believe they could hack off others!

 

Oh they do! In fact in the UK we've had cilic Jewish courts for 100 years, Muslims simply exploited the same loophole to have their courts.

 

This ^ statement is condescending, mean spirited, intolerant, and dictatorial.
Yep the "tolerant left" should stop claiming to be tolerant. They're as intolerant as it comes. Why pretend?

The left has a totalitarian nature and is distinctly anti-Christian, instead promoting deviant behavior of all kinds (not just sexual) and wealth re-distribution (stealing), and LYING to promote that agenda.

 

I gather you are answering in a very roundabout way that only a person with a completely blannk mind can be identified as someone who doesn't need to believe. Everyone else with this need then becomes religious of one sort or another! The blackbird churping away in the tree outside my window believes in so doing he is protecting his territory from rivals so his mind is not blank and therefore he must also be religious. An ant in a long line of ants believes it is going to find what the ants returning in the opposite direction have found and are carrying back to the nest so it must also be religious!

Of course this is only your belief not mine so the only point we can agree on is that you need to believe it. May I ask why?

 

Now now...don't deflect and use inappropriate analogies. I'm not talking about blackbirds, but about people...and I'm not saying that belief leads to religion as an automatic sequitur, don't know from whence you got that. Belief is any cognitive content held as true sometimes called opinion, many of which can be so strongly held as to become almost religion-like in effect.

Example.......The point is that Bullock's understanding is on par with a child's. I don't know which radio channel she was listening to but no rightminded physicist is going to come with those statements, using the uncertainty principle to support a conclusion that existance must have an intelligence behind it! Then there's the claim about anthropologists no longer believing in evolution! This is the mind of a child at work. is your belief.

In fact, in your following paragraph, you actually say...

.No, firstly I am not sexist and secondly I believe mature people can become religious or convert from one to another. Yes, there are quite a lot of religious scientists however they are getting fewer and particularly scientists engaged in the nature and origins of the universe. Also of note that Einstein allowed his religious tendancies to mislead him so he failed to make one of the biggest discoveries of all time: the expanding universe. Not to mention losing to Bohr with "God doesn't play dice". Thankfully these days hot shot scientists are less likely to be lead astray.

You're just not really getting this, are you?

And by the way...I actually said Everybody appears to need to believe in something...even if that something is disbelief. The addition of appears makes it an observation.....not a belief.

 

It's nice to see that you're not given to hold discriminating prejudiced views on people based on their gender or their religious beliefs - but oh well, the second paragraph again shows that you do.

 

Well spotted. In fact I've met many atheists whose missionary zeal would put some Jehovah's witnesses to shame.

And many posters' unfavourable views on Islam seem to find their roots in their general suspicion against or lack of knowledge about religion as such.

 

Well, I think what fiddlerdave did here was just holding up a mirror to islamophobes. If you perceive this statement as mean spirited, intolerant and dictatorial you should probably judge islamophobic statements in the very same way.

 

How is it:
"condescending"? Fundamentalists of most stripes advocate the woman at home caring for the children, and having as many as possible. My own college-degreed catholic mom was prohibited from working for 25 years, until my dad took off with a younger woman, and mom had to go to work a $1 an hour (minimum wage) to support 4 kids at home.

"mean spirited"? THEIR PLAN, not mine!

"intolerant and dictatorial"? Did I say lock up fundamentalists? Outlaw them? Forcefully EXPELL them out of the country" NOT allow them to work in the government?

Did I tell women they COULDN'T do it? Nope.

Don't paint me with YOUR "condescending, mean spirited, intolerant, and dictatorial" philosophies and desires.

 

Religion is more complicated than an imaginary friend, but it seems to rely on similar impulses and tendencies.

Granted, as far as I can tell, it's also like being in love. I admit that I can't rationally explain why I love my girlfriend, so I guess that's probably part of what religious people see in their faith.

 

It was no analogy. You were talking about minds not being blank and that goes for blackbirds as much as people. No, that's right you didn't just call it religion but "other not really religions" which was any belief including disbelief and a belief was merely the result of a thought or group of thoughts. So yes, you were in fact making the case that any belief, even the belief that the sun will rise tomorrow, is akin to religion. Of course I don't share this belief so by your very own logic it is only true for you and others (apparently Junobet at least) who share your way of thinking. A belief which is rational being based on objective criteria and open to scientific testing is esentially different from a religious coviction however strongly it is held and will therefore never be "almost religion-like in effect". Frankly it is laughable for you to accuse me of religious fervour in holding an opinion that Bullock's understanding is on par with a child's. What do you believe? Is she simply lying? Has her account been doctored, spiced up? Alternatively maybe you actually believe that anthropologists no longer believe in evolution!

You are right, I don't get your point. I suspect a troll.

Sorry but it doesn't work. You cannot observe thoughts of disbelief directly therefore your observation is really an interpretation which again is open to opinion making it a belief.

 

Really? I haven't met any atheists going door to door trying to save souls, what were they like, smartly dressed, sleek?

Well I think Islamic extremism has open eyes to the negative effects of the irrational even for seemingly innocuous beliefs. Nothing to do with lack of knowledge though.

 

What makes you call it prejudice? Do you have any explanation for the gender disparity?

 

Maybe blackbirds do think in the same way humans do..but I don't know that, do you? I know my dog doesn't...because I asked him and got a blank look!

While admittedly the first part of my first post referred to religion......because your post to which I was responding referred to religion, the last sentence was a stand alone as a general observation......which was why I did not include it in either paragraph referring to religion..or refer to religion in it.

I was not accusing you of religious fervour..I was simply saying that belief is really just opinion...but you seem to have a hang-up about religion, so you have read all I have said with the erroneous perception you applied to my comment Everybody appears to need to believe in something...even if that something is disbelief.

All the rest has been an effort to explain, in response to your How would you identify a someone who didn't need to believe in your "something"? that people who can think don't really have the option of not believing in something.....even if their belief is only that they don't need to believe in something.

Junobet and I, btw...don't share the same way of thinking..I'm an atheist..she is not......though I do think that the non-religious parts of the Ten commandments are a pretty decent way to live your life.

I'm not a troll, really..just bored!

 

As Rania al-Baz has already pointed out in the very article that you yourself linked gender disparity is based in culture.
While culture and religion are intertwined they are not inseperable.
For example my old pastor is very hot on Pauline theology. Yet he doesn't have a problem with women attending his services unveiled nor does he have a problem with his female colleagues. Probably because he locates those texts of Paul that are myogynistic from a modern point of view where they belong: in Paul's culture rather than in the essence of his theology. And he cherishes texts like Galatians 3:28.

And the prejudice starts where you generalize perceived norms and don't leave room for exceptions to the convenient little box „Muslim woman = victim“.

Here's another interview with a Muslim woman who probably would not like to be reduced to a „victim“ and Western stereotypes about Muslim women. Apparently she reads the Qu'ran a bit like modern theologists read Paul: http://urdutahzeeb.net/articles/blog1.php?p=8926&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1
Somehow I have a feeling you are going to dissect, diminuish or counter it with more victim stories (of course there are plenty even in the artickle I just linked) because that's the place Muslim women ought to have in your head. The problem is that this approach of yours does not only not help women who are indeed victims, it cements that role for them and any others.

 

What you don't seem to be getting is that when "Muslim" women become liberated, they then therefore are no longer "Muslim". Being Muslim is how you live your life > according to the Islamic laws of the Koran. They can wear hijabs, go to mosques, pray 5 times a day, whatever, but if they are free from the domination of Muslim men, they they are no longer Muslims. They have become apostates, and good for them.

Frankly, if I was a Muslim wife, and my husband thought it was proper to beat me, and he was coming at me to do that, I'd shoot him.

 

No she shouldn't because :

1. the statements you refer to aren't "Islamaphobic" (of which there is no such thing), they are protectionist.


2. only reason you think protectionist statements could be mean spirited, intolerant and dictatorial, is because you lack the knowledge of Islamization that produces them. Do your reading/research on Islamization, and then make your judgements of people and how they should judge. Taken the Islamization Quiz yet ?

 

But do all religions not tell you how to live your life? I can see little difference between Orthodox Judaism and Islam re control of how you are expected to behave....and all sects of Christianity, Buddhism etc have specific rules to which believers are expected to adhere.

Re the wife abuse,.believe me ,it is not just Muslim men who abuse their wives.it is a controlling man thing and not a specifically religious thing.

domestic abuse occurs in Jewish families at about the same rate as in the general community – about 15% and the abuse takes place among all branches of Judaism and at all socio-economic levels.

Abuse in Jewish Marriages

One out of every four Christian couples experiences at least one episode of physical abuse within their marriage. In fact, battering is the single largest cause of injury to women—more than auto accidents, muggings, and rapes combined. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists reports that 3 to 4 million women are beaten in their homes every year. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, approximately 2,000 women are murdered every year by an intimate partner.

Abuse in Christian Marriages

Based on information from Muslim leaders, social workers, and activists in North America, the North American Council for Muslim Women says that approximately 10 percent of Muslim women are abused emotionally, physically, and sexually by their Muslim husbands. (There are no hard numbers, because community leaders haven't taken the well-known problem seriously enough to research.)

Abuse in the Muslim Community

And I'm pretty sure there is information about wife-abuse for all other religions....and for agnostics, atheists, humanists etc as well.

 

I am quite sure that ALL of the Muslim women I know feel EXACTLY the same way, and would stop an abusive husband in their tracks. There is nothing Islamic about what you suggest.

Do Catholics cease being Catholic when they take birth control or use a condom?

Do Christians cease being followers of Christ when they advocate bombing countries full of people?

Islam has the same HUGE variety of followers, beliefs, schisms, fundamentalism, liberals, cultural practices of marriage, sex, family practices and EVERYTHING else that Christianity has.

This myth of a "Monolithic Muslim Menace" is an absolute pig sty of ignorant hogwash.

And I really suggest you join a "Koran" study group and see how people actually follow the "Koran" in REAL life before you continue with this foolish rhetoric.

I am sure David Koresh considered the people who left his group as "no longer Christian", but that does not define Christianity.

 

They relate to protecting products by using tariffs or quotas on imported goods?

 

This will be ignored by Protectionist, that is his MO

 

To the extent that blackbirds expect their churping to have a certain result it would seem self evident that they think in the same way people do. That is not to say they reason. There is little doubt that animals generally are capable of discerning patterns and this again gives rise to expectation which is a belief. So if I throw breadcrumbs out at dawn each morning the blackbirds will expect it to happen and be ready. the longer it goes on the greater their expectation will be. If I don't do it one morning then they will still have some expectation that it will happen the next until gradually their expectation changes. Blackbirds brains and humans have a common ancestral brain which we have every reason to believe was capable of discrning patterns and having expectations ie. beliefs. I am sure you and your dog have some common expectations eg that you will be happy to see each other after time apart which comes from a belief you mean something to each other.

So what was the relevance of your last statement to the rest or to my post?

I don't have any religious hang ups.

I'm sorry but if I wrongly interpreted your statement due to the context in which it was made then the alternative is that it is a very banal one which doesn't add anything of consequence to the topic. Yes, people need their brains, they need to think and so do other animals, it is a basic product of evolution and therefore essential to survival.

Well it is apparent that Junobet appreciates your response to my post in a way I don't so on some level you must thnk in the same way. Actually I think we all three probably share a common culture and have fairly similar ways of thinking when it comes down to it.