CANADIAN ISLAMIC CONGRESS SPONSORS PINK HIJAB DAY" FOR BREAST CANCER RESEARCH II

The answer is above.

[ 04 November 2007: Message edited by: Cueball ]

What is a humanist?

It seems to me that Stalin was from the vein of European thinking. Secular humanist socialism, in other words. It seems to me that "humanism" as if it is naturally a good thing, gets bandied about quite a lot lately, despite is rather horrendous track record. To me, it appears to be not much more than Christian evangelical morality applied without the need for a god.

Actually we can discuss that here, if you like: [url=http://www.rabble.ca/babble/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic&f=21&t=001823]R... poisons everything - Hitchens [/url]

[ 04 November 2007: Message edited by: Cueball ]

Well Stalin believed otherwise, apparently. It is convenient I think just to disavow someones membership in a club simply because they bring the club into disrepute. You still have no defined "humanism". And I don't really see where post-modernism comes into it, except I guess in that it is the begining of a rejection of ideology in favour of an analysis of hierarchical power structures, however justified. Anyway, not the thread for this, as I said.

That is more or less how I felt about Unionists rather antagonistic post about my "obsession" ancient Jewish religious practices. He well knows that I certainly do not think they reflect on the great majority of modern practices of the faith, and nothing I said suggested that they did.

I thought it was completely pointless needling, since he damned well knows where I stand on this issue, and knows that I am really talking about theological comparisons, and liniage of certain theolgical ideas-- not talking about how backward theological literalism is reified today, either in Judaism or Islam. In fact I think I have said as much as that IMO Islam, Judaism, and Christianity are for all intents and purposes the same religion, no matter how the adherents of the various sects like to bicker about their differences.

Frankly they are more the same than different. They certainly have more in common with each other than any of them do to Budhist or Hindu teachings.

But then again, if people like Elysium want to use "stoning" as some kind of meter of what makes a religion inately moral or not, the fact remains that there is a whole hell of a lot more stoning in the Torah than in the Qur'an, so people should think twice, dare I say, before casting the first stone, so to speak, particularly when demanding literalist interpretations be applied to ancient religious texts.

Or is that we are only allowed to apply these absolutist literalist interpretation in the case of Islam, and not Judaism? Is that the point being made. Frankly, I find this whole train of arguement regarding the literalist interpretation of Islam, and Islams [i]real[/i] intent, its [i]real[/i] meaning, its [i]latent[/i] barbarism, its [i]inate[/i] "bedouin" tribalist-primativist anti-modernist backwardness (as if the people who wrote the Bible and the Torah where not a few steps away from being pritive animists themselves, and instead some kind of "modernist" enlightenment philosophers) [i]to be just as ignorant and distasteful as any of the so called "Chosen People" theological deconstructions made about Jews.[/i] Same thing, just a different target, albiet a socially acceptable one.

To me its just bigotry dressed up as anthropology and comparative theology.

But no I don't want to argue. I am actually interested in this subject of Humanism. I said if you want to go further into this discussion, and post repeatedly on it, then we could do it on another thread since it really has nothing to do with this topic at all.

[ 04 November 2007: Message edited by: Cueball ]

You? Not you. Your ire is general, if misplaced, and basicly I see no harm in that. Maybe it is just an issue of sensitivities. However, I am sorry you can not see the gyst of what is being said. I certainly don't see why you would be defending a line of thought that results in statement like this:

quote:

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A lot of people here have stated that the occurring misogyny in Islamic states is due to culture rather than religion. I disagree with this. Islam itself, based on Bedouin culture (the 'original' Arabs), is not just a religion, but also a way of life and society under a set of strict laws (sharia) to be followed.

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This is entirely in line with the "Islamist" writings of such as Daniel Pipes, Christopher Hitchens, Huntington, et al, and is the neo-conservative line, when promoted as anthropology and comparative theology: in a nutshell, it is pseudo scientific basket weaving designed to serve a political end.

Clearly the speaker is asserting that there is something unqiuely tyrranical about Islam, as opposed to other religions, especially in the context of women. Its not, yet another manifestation of Judaeo/Christian theology, but instead uniquely Bedouin Arab primitvist anti-modernist. This line directly removes Islam from that tradition, and makes it clearly "other." This is then couched in pseudo-anthropolgial comparative theology, of the kind we see when Wahida C.Valiante of the CIC does her number about recism is a Jewish invention based in the concept of the "Chosen People," which as I mentioned in the previous thread I think is essentially racist.

Lets keep in mind the speakers first reaction to "pink Hijab" day is that it is "[b]disgusting[/b] that they (CIC) would encourage non-muslim women to wear hijabs."

Hijab: disgusting?

You seemed sensitive enough to come after Remind for her casual and general off-the-cuff mentioning of "choseness" in another thread, but do not seem so senstive to these same kinds of reductionist/literalist meta-interpretations of Islam even when pressed agressively.

[ 05 November 2007: Message edited by: Cueball ]

I know you do. I think you should take a closer look at the liniage of ideas being expressed by Elysium, and where they come from, and how they are being used to construct a qua-anthropological attack upon Islam, as inately different than Judaeo-Christian traditions which inform our society, as a means of winning consent among the intelligensia for internal and external attacks upon Muslim people.

But I disagree, I think we can make judgements about religious texts, in terms of good things and bad things we can find within them. I just think that this has very little to do with how they are practiced, and that they are practiced in terms of the reigning social and cultrual norms of the society within which they operate, not based on the texts themselves. They are the source of justifications for authority, not the basis of the authority -- the texts serve the power, they are not the source of it. So therefore, trying to discern actual practice, based in the textual source, is as much charlantry, as that practiced by the authors of the texts themselves.

It is being argued here, more or less, that Islam is anti-modernist and backward. I disagree, the Qur'an is possibly the first modernist ideological text, combining an idealist theological ideology founded in Judeao-Christian tradition linked to a comprehensive poltical analysis, and direct call for society wide reform.

The seeds of this can be found both in the Torah and in the Bible, most notably Jesus Christ's revolt against the Roman Empire, and its puppet government, and the local elite, but the Qur'an, as I said before, clarifies this message, and disambiguates much of the mythology. This is one of the reasons, Jesus is such an important figure in the Qur'an.

[ 05 November 2007: Message edited by: Cueball ]

I disagree. Certainly religions act to enforce male privilage, but they also act variously to enforce all kinds of social opression. Religions to not purely exist for the repression of women. I think religions can also stop-gap protections againsts abuse, and even in some cases revolutionary.

It all depends on circumstance.

And as for the whole idea that I am trying to control this thread, etc. I suggested that we continue this discussion somewhere else, so that you can do whatever it is you think you are doing in peace. Personally I am not sure that you are not simply hazing muslim women for being "prudes". But unfortunately no one seemed to want to oblige me in that offer.

See above. I even provided a link.

[ 05 November 2007: Message edited by: Cueball ]

quote:

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Originally posted by remind:
[b]

The most serious and continuous kind of social oppression has been, and is, that against women. And that it oppresses others is a by product IMV. [/b]

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According to you. I disagree. For instance, it could easily be argued that the most serious and continous social opression has been, and is, that against gay people.

But again, I think that is social norms authorized by religious ideology.

[ 05 November 2007: Message edited by: Cueball ]

Ok. All repression is an expression of patriarchal relations, and liberations and salvage will be available to all, once patriarchy is vanquished. All roads lead to Rome.

Rome however, seems to mean different things to different people. Some say Rome is patriarchy, some say it is racism, some say it is economic opression, other imperialism, the only thing they share in common is their singular fixation on their own plight, and its resolution, which each and everyone of us must recognize as the primary source of all evil, or be part of the problem.

So-so solidarity.

[ 05 November 2007: Message edited by: Cueball ]

And all this bigotry exposed because of a flipping scarf. We might as well argue about how pink is essentially a sexist colour.

If you want to count up fatalities, it is possible that I could see how you could make your case, but going from that to "gay men share [b]equally[/b] the power of a patriarchial society," is complete dismissal of the plight of gay people in the name of feminism.

However, what if I were to say that it could easily be argued that the most serious and continous social opression has been, and is, that against males who are routinely lined up for slaughter in the name of almost any ideology, religious or otherwise, as they fight their ridiculous wars.

I can really see now why wearing a Hijab, pink or otherwise, could be seen as an anti-opression statement.

[ 05 November 2007: Message edited by: Cueball ]

Really you think that women as a class are more opressed that gay people? For one thing, as a class gay people are an actually minority, so arguing for a statistical analysis based on size of attrocity hardly seem valuable. I mean literally all kinds of movement religious and otherwise call for direct execution of gay people, no if ands or buts. I can think of no religious movement that actually calls for the immediate execution of women, simple because they are women.

I could just as easily say that Heterosexual women "share equally the power of a hetero-sexist society".

So, in fact the quality of opression is more severe in the case of gay people. At least we have this straight, the opression of women is oblique, and structured, while gay people can and often are simply exterminated. And moreover, the idea that gay struggles are not "gendered" flies in the face of much of what is being said about gayness today in that it is as much a biological function as gender, in that one does not choose to be gay, so, if that is the case, then your arguement that the repression is a function of biological predetermination in the case of women, and not in the case of gay men, falls flat.

But most importantly what is irritating about this discussion is the entire focus on a stupid piece of cloth as being eblematic of some kind of deeper opression of women to be found in Muslim cultures. This is a ridiculous discussion point.

If one wants to talk about oppression of women in muslim countries I think people should be talking about the real facts of that opression, such as arranged marriages (common in many muslim countries) or lack of access to economic independence, or lack of access to corridors of power in the governing structure, or the many areas where Muslim women struggle to assert themselves in a real way on a day to day basis, not this ridiculous issue of what amounts to fashion politics.

Why is this? Why is it that whenever people start talking about womens rights in Muslim societies, we end up talking about what is culurally different, and easily idenfiable as non-western, when if we really did discuss the real concrete issues that Muslim feminist women face in their societies we would end up talking about issues that are almost precisely the same as those that women here face on a day to day basis, in our so-called secular society, which has never, [i]unlike Pakistan[/i], ever elected a female to the highest political office in the country.

Benzier Bhutto, by the way, does wear Hijab, in a slighly cocky fashionable way, it is true, but she still does wear it. So much for the great and glorious superiority of western secularism and its cherrished support of womens rights. Obviously in Pakistan, there are enough men and women, (most of who are certainly Muslim, who are able to elect a woman to the office of Prime Minister) whereas the one example where a woman managed to achieve that office through the back door in this country was hounded out of office on a landslide of regressive sexist backlash. Yes, Bhutto was thrown out of office by military coup, but it is also clear there was enough politcal support to put a woman there in the first place. No such thing has ever been evidenced here, or in the United States.

And who organized and supported this coup in the first place? I know for a fact that the military government was recognized immediatly by the forces of the self-proclaimed champions of progressive secular morality, the United States of America.

Is the reason that we end up talking about this silly piece of cloth, because we would end up talking about exactly the same problems that face women here, and discover, well no, arranged marriage is not strictly a Muslim phenomena, and that much of the day to day symptoms of sexist opression of women faced by Muslim women, are not so far different than what women face here. In other words, would any deeper discussion, actually uncover the fact that if we talked about the reality of women's opression in the Muslim world, we would end up talking about ourselves, by necessity?

But yeah, lets talk about Hijab. It is safe. It is over there. It is someone else.

When I read men piously declaiming on the opression of Muslim women "forced" to wear Hijab, I can never escape the feeling that its an easy way for western men to establish their feminist credentials, while at the same time avoiding any self-examination whatsoever.

[ 05 November 2007: Message edited by: Cueball ]

No you can not count on me as an ally if you are going to assert that Patriarchal opression trumps all opression, as in "the most serious and continuous kind of social oppression has been, and is, that against women. [b]And that it oppresses others is a by product IMV,"[/b] and this leads one to be able to assert that "gay men share equally the power of a patriarchial society," which is patently false.

Gay men certainly do not share [b]equally[/b] the power of patriarchal society, they are certainly and specifically opressed by it, while they may in [i]certain aspects[/i] profit by it, just as other men do. But to simply dismiss opression of gay people out of hand on the basis that it is some kind of byproduct of patriarchal opression is as false as any marxist claiming that patriarchal opression is a by-product of class relations, and so therefore politically subservient, and even, dare I say irrelevant.

[ 05 November 2007: Message edited by: Cueball ]

No its no just blah blah blah. Its precisely the form of argument used by Marxist to assert that their particular ideological analysis trumped any other ideological analysis, particularly ones relating the male hegemony and white racial hegemony, just in the manner that you are suggesting that feminist patriarchal analysis trumps all other ideological analysis.

quote:

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Originally posted by remind:
[b]Frankly, you are not an ally, by your words and by your seeming unconcern, that fully half of the world's population is being oppressed, and that millions are being raped daily and thousands murdered, by MEN, day in and day out, and still thousands, if not millions, more women are more being beaten daily and have been for over 2000 years.[/b]

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And I am more than a little bit concerned that the obsession with Muslim headgear (not necessarily yours) is part and parcel of the construction of an patronizing media image of people who wear funny clothing, and who need to be saved from their backward ways and so can be slaughtered willy nilly in their thousands, men women and children on a weekly basis, right now, today, to totals which by some estimates are in the range of a million in the last four years.

My point Remind about gay men, is simply that if we look at the [i]quality[/i] of opression as served out by religious leaders for gay people, it is far more directly opressive, metting out immediate execution for example simply for the fact of being gay. This is not a quantative analyisis. It may be that quantitively religion, and religious institution help authorize patriarchal structures which result in rape and murder of women, they do not directly (in most cases) order the rape and murder of women, just for being women, in fact they condemn it, for the most part.

On the other hand religious authorities, quite often directly sanction vigilante killings of gay men, simply for being gay. It was gay people who were first selected for the death camps, after the physically disabled, and guess what, gay convicts were not released after the war, either by Soviet or US authorities, but remained incarcerated for their crimes. No women were sent to Dachau because they were women.

Being a woman has never been in and of itself a crime, whereas being gay often has been defined as a crime. Again, this is a qualative difference in the nature of the opression. It is may very well be as I said above that quantatively women are more opressed, but the nature of that opression is different.

[ 05 November 2007: Message edited by: Cueball ]

[ 05 November 2007: Message edited by: Cueball ]

Well fortuantely we are discussing Islam, and Islam has never asserted that women were not people, and never asserted that they did not have rights. Yes, it asserted that they had qualatively different rights, but not that they did not have souls, or were not people, etc. The Qur'an is quite explict about the fact that women exists before god, and have rights, souls, can go to heaven or hell and the like, even the right to alimony. Quite progressive really for 800 AD.

In fact, it very well could be that this obsessive objectification of Muslim women's funny clothing, is in fact, the patriarchaly motivated expression of imperial culture, which in fact enables the rape and slaughter of Muslim women, in the name of saving them.

And Remind, I edited my previous post to specifically exclude you from those who are obsessing about Muslim women's clothing. I can see that you are making an altogether different point. Sorry if you did not see that before you posted.

[ 05 November 2007: Message edited by: Cueball ]

Yeah, well Remind you and I disagree.

I don't believe all opression begins and ends with patriarchy, and I don't believe that all opression begins and ends with capitalism, and I don't believe that all opression begins and ends with racist imperialist colonialism, in fact I agree with Bell Hooks, who talks about confronting white supremacist capitalist patriarchy:

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I think that strategically, we have to start on all fronts. For example, I’m very concerned that there are not more Black women deeply committed to anti-capitalist politics. But one would have to understand the role that gender oppression plays in encouraging young Black females to think that they don’t need to study about capitalism. That they don’t need to read men who were my teachers like Walter Rodney, and Nkrumah, and Amilcar Cabral.

I think that as a girl who grew up in a patriarchal, working-class, Black, southern household there was a convergence of those issues of class and gender. I was acutely aware of my class, and I was acutely aware of the limitations imposed on me by gender. I wouldn’t be the committed worker for freedom that I am today had I not begun to oppose that gendered notion of learning that suggests that politics is the realm of males and that political thinking about anti-racist struggle and colonialism is for men.

I’m very much in favor of the kind of education for critical consciousness that says: Let’s not look at these thing separately. Let’s look at how they converge so that when we begin to take a stand against them, we can take that kind of strategic stance that allows us to be self-determining as a people struggling in a revolutionary way on all fronts.

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[url=http://allaboutbell.com/challenging_patriarchy.htm]Challenging Capitalism & Patriarchy [/url]

No. It does not say that at all.

I might even disagree with Hooks that there is "a danger" in starting from Feminism, or rather I would think that my stand on that would be that starting from feminism is just fine, but reducing ones analysis to feminism alone without "a critique of domination [i]in all its forms[/i]", is dangerous, I think, just as it is dangerous to propose an analysis of capitalism without also engaging racism and patriarchy, and I think that is the body of the point.

As she says about Marxism:

quote:

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Absolutely. I think Marxist thought--the work of people like Gramsci--is very crucial to educating ourselves for political consciousness. [b]That doesn’t mean we have to take the sexism or the racism that comes out of those thinkers and disregard it.[/b] It means that we extract the resources from their thought that can be useful to us in struggle. A class rooted analysis is where I begin in all my work. The fact is that it was bourgeois white feminism that I was reacting against when I stood in my first women’s studies classes and said, "Black women have always worked." It was a class-biased challenge to the structure of feminism.

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[ 05 November 2007: Message edited by: Cueball ]

Yeah well I don't have an MA. Does that validate, or invalidate? And who gives a fuck really?

Why don't you just email them, its right at the top of the page.

What's the matter Cueball? You upset that you can't actually speak about women's oppression without your academic crap? You a tad upset that lived experience trumps your oh so slick words?

The mods will come along in due time. I don't generally send them e-mails unless there is a troll on board. I don't think you are a troll. I just think you are an extremely angry man with some sort of axe to grind.

I leave you to your magnetic personality.