Aspie Muslims?

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Well aside from the few (you know who I am talking about!) this thread has been very good.
I think we should delete all comments that have hate speach in them and the rest will be intellectual debates.
I really like the anwsers I am getting.
There are simply some things I can't learn from just reading a book and I need an actual person to send messages to me for anwsers.
A teacher is worth far more then a textbook.

no deletions, this is fairly civil considering the centuries of bad blood between some of the religions

Canada's not got too good a record, in that respect, so I hear.

Satisfy my curiosity, please: could you define exactly what hate speech is?

I agree that Western societies were very sexist until quite recently.

I don't know how much travelling a person needs to do, or how many of the 40+ Islamic countries a person needs to visit before they can express an opinion on Islam.
I'm not that widely travelled myself, but I have spent about six months in Saudi Arabia, where - apparently - the Koran is the basis for the country's constitution.

As majedemon will know, women are not allowed to drive in Saudi Arabia nor travel within or outside the country without being accompanied by a male relative.
Women are not required to cover their faces, but they must cover their "forms", including arms and legs. The 15-year old daughter of one of my dad's acquaintances was arrested for not wearing an abaya. Her own fault really - or her parents' fault at least. I do believe in "when in Rome, do as the Romans do" and all that.
As for myself, I was lucky enough to encounter the mutawa'een (religious police) one time though. It was the middle of the day, and people were trying to chill out in a nice air-conditioned shopping mall, when the religious police showed up brandishing sticks and shouting orders through megaphones, presumably informing people that it was prayer time. People were shit-scared of them.

Apparently, many Saudis hate the mutawaeen. I doubt the ruling family of Saudi Arabia are that fanatically religious themselves. It seems they are required to appear so - as befitting their role as guardians of Mecca - to placate the fanatics in their midsts.

Anyway, Saudi was a great place for cheap CDs and pirated computer games.

Anyway, I should also point out that I spent two years of my childhood in Qatar, and I loved it. I probably wouldn't love it so much if I were a citizen and an adult living in the country, given that they have no democracy and little freedom of speech. However, from what I remember, women were allowed to drive in Qatar, and they were also not required to cover themselves.
I've spent a few months in Kuwait too. Kuwait is more liberal than Qatar, and far more so than Saudi; they even have Christian churches in Kuwait! But it's still not a democracy.

I imagine life is fairly safe and peaceful for many people in Islamic countries as long as they toe the line. But according to freedomhouse.org, there is only one Islamic country in the whole world that qualifies as free: Mali.
And while life might be peaceful in places like Qatar and Kuwait, it seems like it rarely is on the edges of "Dar-al-Islam", e.g., Kashmir, Israel/Palestine, Sudan, Nigeria, Chechnya, Thailand, Philippines.

Maybe I was a bit consciously provocative in my last post. But I don't (or I try not to) say things I don't really believe.
I am not a religious person, and I do find it difficult to understand why a Westerner would convert to Islam. I suppose I can grasp certain reasons intellectually. I guess Islam is helping to fill the "secular void" that conservative commentators warn about.
There are things I dislike about mainstream Britain. Binge drinking culture for instance. But while I'm sure Islam offers many positives to the believer, I definitely think that, on balance, its growing influence in Britain represents a "retrograde force", to paraphrase Winston Churchill.

i truly respect your post. we Saudis do not like the mutawaeen, they are giving a very bad image on islam.
about the women can't drive thing, it has nothing to do with islam! islam never said that women shouldn't drive! every other islamic country in the world let women drive like anyother place. and about women can't travle without a man?.. no no man.. my mom travles alot without a male with her.. just her sisters.. she only needs premission from my father thats it.

if you think that we have some weird rules or traditions, you should think what the difference in our live are. i'm trying to say that :
in my country we don't worry about getting muged,raped,stapped,etc... it does happen, but not like westren cities.

we don't have alot of the issues america are having trouble with... like abortion, gay marrige... whatever.. because we use the holy quran for everything in our lives.

how many people in westren countries don't know who their real father is?.. how many people lived with there grandmothers because their families use drugs, or are alcoholics... since i have been in the usa, i have seen alot of people with an unhappy past.
i never saw that or even heard of it back in my country, because there are alot of rules that doesn't make that even possible.

i hope all of you understand what i am trying to say. our rules aren't made by us, it's the rules of our religion. and our religion is from god. if you take any rule and try to see what it really does to the comunity, you would find that normal people could never understand the benifits.

Point taken. I imagine the Koran and Hadith have very little to say about automobiles!
Since others had posted on sexism, I was just mentioning what I'd witnessed. From what I remember, Qatar and Kuwait were far less sexist societies than Saudi.
Where the Saudi authorities get their ideas about women and driving I don't know, but I know the Hadith mentions the fact that a woman's testimony should be half that of a man's, so maybe things follow on from that.
Anyway, I'm not so much concerned with any supposed sexism that might exist in Islamic scripture (there is surely a lot of that sort of thing in Judeo-Christian scripture), more with the fact that there hasn't been a Reformation in Islam. Plus, Islam seems to have difficulties coexisting with other religions. I don't think this needs to be the case for all time.



I read this at freedomhouse.org, but I'm not sure if it's consistent with my experiences in Saudi Arabia. I'm sure I saw groups of women many times, but I don't think I ever saw a woman out on her own.
Well, I apologise. I'll double check next time.

thanks man, i really appreciate what you are saying, and that it is out of fact. I just would like to comment on one thing, Islamic countries "were" the best in co-existing with people from other religions, especially Jews and Christians. Yes, there was a lot of blood shed, but it was mostly done by the other end. Example the crusades that were made to kill Muslims in Jerusalem and take over that area… while at that time it was under Islamic rule, it had a lot of happy Jews and Christians living peacefully. And when Muslims got that area back they signed a peace treaty with the Christians, which they broke after awhile. I'm just trying to tell you that true Islam isn't terror and killing innocent people, it isn't made to hurt anyone. We only fight when we need to, and that is when we are under attack. We don't look for trouble. And if someone that calls himself a Muslim and kills somebody that is innocent, he is not a Muslim anymore.

*Mithrandir blocks the punch*

Yes Canada has a terrible record with human rights.
We have killed millions of First Nations people.
And opened up reserved schools in the past which really created more abuse.
We also created concentration camps for Japanese Canadians in WWII.
*Mithrandir is hitting himself, almost out of the ring! Just look at that bloody nose*

Hate speech is prejudiced speech against an ethnic nationality, culture, religion or group.
You basically say something just to promote violence or flames.
*Mithrandir is crazy folks, he just thrown himself out of the ring!*

When it comes down to it, life is like a test (according to Islam).... Depends how alert one is during the exam and whether one sticks to what needs to be done or get's side tracked with their own view and desires

Speech someone disapproves of.

ruveyn