Religion V: Utopianism, Fundamentalism, Apothesis

[Sci-2]

Continue.

[Stubby]

You forgot dogmatism, fanaticism and schism. :p

[Sci-2]

You forgot dogmatism, fanaticism and schism. :P

Oh, I figured we'd covered the New Atheists enough in the last few iterations of these threads.

[Stubby]

Touche.

[Sci-2]

Slavery in Islam: To have and to hold

THE holy book is clear about what to do when you capture a city: “Put to the sword all the men in it”. As for the women and children, “You may take these as plunder for yourselves.” This is pretty much the advice that the fighters of Islamic State (IS) seem to have followed in the Sinjar area of northern Iraq, peopled largely by members of the Yazidi faith, that the jihadists seized last month. Reports by the UN and independent human-rights groups suggest that the invaders executed hundreds of Yazidi men and kidnapped as many as 2,000 women and children.

Any doubt as to the fate of these captives was dispelled by the latest issue of IS’s glossy English-language online magazine,Dabiq. An article titled “The Revival of Slavery Before the Hour” details religious justifications for reintroducing a practice that ended in all but a few Muslim countries more than a century ago. It claims not only that the Koran, the sayings of the prophet and traditional Islamic law all endorse the enslavement of infidel women captured in wartime, but that the abandonment of this right has caused sin to spread; men are easily tempted to debauchery when denied this “legal” alternative to marriage.

Yet the fact is that, like members of most faiths, the vast majority of Muslims have pragmatic concerns about hyper-literal interpretations. Mainstream Muslim clerics, citing competing verses and traditions that praise the freeing of slaves as a virtuous act, often describe Islam’s abandonment of slavery as a sign of its adaptability to modern times. Besides, imagine if Christians and Jews still followed the letter of the Bible, which is, incidentally, the source of the passage at the top of this article. The verse (Deuteronomy 20:10-20) also prescribes that in case of capturing a city from the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites or Jebusites, the victors should “utterly destroy them” and “save alive nothing that breatheth”.

[Ormond]

There actually are a (very few) Christian "reconstructionists" in the United States who advocate a return to what they call "Biblical slavery".

http://www.talk2action.org/story/2011/4/7/162237/4554

[Summah]

Some Orthodox Jews believe in slavery also. Hmm...seems to be a pattern here.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Summah,

Interesting. Is there a link on that?

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Summah,

Is this what you found:

http://www.torahphilosophy.com/2012/04/case-for-slavery.html

From the article:

Therefore, we see that slavery tended to introduce primitive people to more advanced societies and thereby to spread civilization. Seemingly, slavery is similar to colonialism and it often existed in connection with colonialism. Colonialism could be brutal, however it could be benign as well. The same may be true of slavery. I would not say that slave traders and slave owners were exactly Peace Corp volunteers, however that may not be so far from the truth.

Witness the results of slavery in modern times. Although I do not condone the unneeded cruelty of some American slave owners, and neither does Judaism, however if not for slavery, millions of blacks would not be enjoying a comfortable life in America. People like the Reverend Jeremiah Wright may be filled with hatred for white Americans, however perhaps they should have a little gratitude also. What type life style do their never enslaved cousins in Africa have? The life expectancy of blacks in America is 73 years, for blacks in Africa it's 46 years.

Good lord. :Facepalm:

[OnionAhaiReborn]

Mainstream Muslim clerics, citing competing verses and traditions that praise the freeing of slaves as a virtuous act, often describe Islam’s abandonment of slavery as a sign of its adaptability to modern times.

The idea that there are clerics out there in the 21st century praising their religion for its adaptability in abandoning slavery is pretty amusing.

My two cents- liberals are all too willing to award bonus points to cultural conservatives who abandon reactionary positions well after the rest of enlightened society has moved on. You see a lot of this with the current Pope.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

OAR,

So, what? You want to discourge people to abandon socially conervative positions?

[Summah]

Ser Scot,

I found out about this because I got into an argument (where I became very angry and upset) with some haredi people who were earnestly defending Torah slavery. But no, they believe that because the Torah has rules about slavery that it's still morally acceptable, though not practiced because it's illegal, there were a lot of bs rationalizations they gave me (fwiw they also believe animals will be sacrificed again when the messiah comes and the third temple is a place). So more like:

http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/305549/jewish/Torah-Slavery-and-the-Jews.htm

Okay, they're not really slaves. Slaves are people owned by other people. In Torah law, you never have complete ownership over anything. These slaves rest on the seventh day and Jewish holidays, cannot be physically or sexually abused and are obligated in many mitzvot. So they are really more like indentured servants.

.

But according to the people I argued with, you can breed your slaves and those babies will become your slaves, which doesn't sound like indentured servitude to me. And as an aside I think indentured servitude is also morally wrong, if less so than slavery.

And http://www.shamash.org/lists/scj-faq/HTML/faq/11-04-01.html

Is slavery moral? We live in a society where same sex marriages, partial-birth abortions, and mercy killings are considered moral by manyand perhaps even the majorityof our society. ...

In Judaism, we've been blessed with the Torah, which tells us very clearly what is moral and immoral, and directs us to elevate ourselves above our society and accept the Torah's definition of morality.

Your link is quite horrifying.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Summah,

Good grief.

[OnionAhaiReborn]

OAR,

So, what? You want to discourge people to abandon socially conervative positions?

I don't see how being unwilling to hand out special praise for social conservatives abandoning positions which most enlightened society has long since abandoned qualifies as discouragement.

[Summah]

Ok so it appears fundamentalists from the three Abrahamic religions believe in slavery, does anyone know about views on slavery in other equally old unrelated religions?

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

OAR,

But you don't want to encourage people to change their positions? What do you do if a conservative you know comes around on homosexual marriage, "You still suck and should have said that years ago."?

[OnionAhaiReborn]

OAR,

But you don't want to encourage people to change their positions? What do you do if a conservative you know comes around on homosexual marriage, "You still suck and should have said that years ago."?

I'd probably not include the gratuitous "you still suck," but "you should have said that years ago" seems perfectly fair. More to the point, I'm saying the actual reaction I'd expect to see (and have seen in related cases) should not happen, they are not deserving of the praise and should not receive it, particularly in a laughable case like, "we gave up slavery." Indifference, perhaps bemusement, is the appropriate response.

I don't see any reason to offer additional encouragement to reactionaries to change their positions, as it's quite obvious that their change in position is already encouraged by their being left behind for holding positions increasingly unpalatable to more and more people. They change when finally they must.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

OAR,

Have you ever heard the expression "you catch more flies with honey than with vinager?" I understand your fruatration but in what universe does being irritated that someone has dropped a formerly reactionary stance on an issue like homosexual marriage helpful?

[Jo498]

I seriously doubt that there is any base for slavery in the Jewish or Christian religion (I do not know enough about Islam). I am not aware that slavery was ever a common practice in the last 2000 years of the Jewish tradition. Slaves were kept in the Christian occident, but to be fair, I think that both the decrease of the practice in the late antiquity and from the 18th century on was very often based on Christian arguments like man in God's image, all men brothers etc.

(As I understand the quotes from the old testament slavery or similar structures are not endorsed, they seem to be taken as a given, like "the poor will always be with you". But of course already the old testament is full of passages demanding justice for the poor, freedom for the enslaved etc.)

Statements like that the slaves/colonized peoples etc. are better off are in no way specific for religious commentators. It's basically the jingoist "White man's burden" doctrine that was shared by most secular western thinkers and politicians until the early, sometimes until the mid 20th century.

Of course I am not defending jingoism, racism or slavery. But the West is doing very little to end de facto slavery (or indentured service or whatever its name) at the fringes of the West (sweat shops, prostitutes etc.). Not to speak of our esteemed allies in Saudi Arabia or some Oil Emirates.

So it seems a little hypocritical to bash a few imams... in any case it seems quite naive to expect that changes that took centuries or decades to become real in the "enlightened secularized West" (where the economies did evolve to more advanced and less obvious kinds of dependence) to be implemented within a few years in regions or traditions that are culturally and economically very different.

[Gears of the Beast]

My two cents- liberals are all too willing to award bonus points to cultural conservatives who abandon reactionary positions well after the rest of enlightened society has moved on. You see a lot of this with the current Pope.

The new 'pope' is a great example of how stupid a lot of these liberals (and before all the liberals start whining, I'm left wing too) are. He's the leader of a criminal organisation with completely bigoted positions and claims to be the vicar of christ. Yet all he needs to do apparently is regurgitate some lazy platitudes and wash some poor people's feet and suddenly he's fan-fucking-tastic. I'm not even sure he's actually substantively reformed any actual catholic positions at all - just said some nice things to the media as far as I can see.

Ok so it appears fundamentalists from the three Abrahamic religions believe in slavery, does anyone know about views on slavery in other equally old unrelated religions?

No, it's only the Semitic religions. Which isn't really surprising, they all love the Tanakh wherein god explicitly sanctions slavery. That isn't to say the NT isn't bad either because no doubt at least one Christian will come in saying "but what about the NEW testament", it tells slaves to obey their masters throughout the NT which is a completely immoral thing to tell a slave.