Aids HIV FAQ

LIFE IN THE WEST

Question:

I’ve had the benefit of reading both Jackkincaid’s and Zuiko Azumazi’ s response. I suspect I need to know more about Puritanism to understand Zuiko’s answer.  As far as I know, Puritanism was gone and forgotten by the start of the USA. I have greater confidence that  Jack and I are saying that religion becomes increasingly the skills I need to understand how to go to heaven and the more intolerant religions grow more tolerant as their adherents understand the benefits of separating religion for politics and spending time on improving political systems as well as other empirically based sciences. Jack, however, suggests that certain of the current strains (apt choice of words) of Islam may never reach the stage of  [development] that permits them to assimilate.  I bracketted the word "development" because I wanted a more progessive-neutral word but didn’t find any.  Some strains of Islam may prefer that curious mixture of belief that permits incantations, dream-interpertation, mystical denial of self, and commitment to mind-warping ritual.  These Muslims would consider the violent overthrow of the US Constitution as progressive.  Might not this strain become as strident, annoying, and impotent as the current Christian right?   Meanwhile the Muslim (and more likely Muslima) will become increasingly Americans whose religion is Islam.   Of course, the burden is on these Muslims, as it is on current Catholics, to deal with those who seek define Islam for everyone.  Zuiko may be suggesting that laws which deny citizenship to those whose religion requires them to participate in the violent overthrow of the Constitution. John Berg —

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Response:

> I think I understand your point but I want to make sure. > I’ll use American Catholics as my explaining tool.

<snip> Comment:- Conversely, the Puritan explanation tool might be! "But then the commonly-held ‘dark side,’ the Massachusetts Bay Colony Puritans: witch-hunts, elitism, intolerance, narrow-minded zealotry; a paradigm used to understand and explain perceived moments of its recurrence within our society, such as in both the 1850’s and the 1950’s, the fervour of morally-crusading Abolitionism, and the fever of Communist-purging McCarthyism." > Has Catholicism changed?  Is that bad?  Certainly American-Catholics are > very proud of being Americans.  And is this the same issue you mean Jack > about the future of Islam?

Comment:- Is your argument still valid if we transpose Puritanism for Catholicism? ‘Has Puritanism changed?  Is that bad?  Certainly American-Puritans are very proud of being Americans.  And is this the same issue you mean John about the future of Islam?’ Just a thought. Peace — Zuiko Azumazi.

Response:

> I think I understand your point but I want to make sure. > I’ll use American Catholics as my explaining tool.  Catholics came in great > numbers to the US starting about 1840.  The moved into and formed Catholic > ghettos in the end of the 1800s and early 1900s but also moved out west and > far west to much greater spaces,  introducing a more diffuss Catholocism, > less Roman if you will. The Pope may have a lot more difficulty with > Catholics in the future and the major difficulties is coming from the > ghettos, where the old fashion Catholocism was "banked" if  you will. > Has Catholocism changed?  Is that bad?  Certainly American-Catholics are > very proud of being Americans.  And is this the same issue you mean Jack > about the future of Islam?

I think it’s a possible future of Islam. The Catholic experience in 19th century America was similar to that of 17th century Britain – we (we British) still burn in effigy every 5th November a Catholic terrorist – the Osama bin Laden of his day – Guido Fawkes, who wanted to destroy the English parliament in the interest of Papal rule (or so it is alleged), just as Abu Hamsa would like to see it flying the green flag of Islam.  Catholics are still disallowed to marry into the British Royal family (as we know, Muslims are allowed to marry the royals, as long as they don’t use the Paris ring-road). But otherwise we regard Catholics as British as anyone else. We used to persecute Quakers too (we sent them to America, in fact) and Mormons, but not any more. We regard Jews as British as everyone else, although they were once persecuted terribly. We, the nation as a whole, are coming to regard Sikhs as British as anyone else, and we have long since regarded Buddhists, and I think perhaps Hindus too, as British as rain, football and warm beer. Acceptance of these populations should be much easier for America, which is a country built on immigration, by necessity without the European sense of indigenous cultures continuing back into pre-history on the same little pieces of land. So, I would say we shouldn’t assume we won’t one day comprehend Muslims as being just as much a part of our national populations as anyone else. I think we  certainly *should* see them that way, if they allow us to. We shouldn’t seek to make the same mistakes we made before with other religious minorities. But there is a requirement of Muslims, which can be put very simply: they must *want* to be British, or American, or French (or whatever). They must *want* to belong to their nation *first*, and their religious group second (if at all). In my limited annecdotal experience the big majority of Muslims, at least in London (and depending on their original national cultures) do want to, or at least want to try – they *do* feel loyal to Britain, but they are being torn between that loyalty and the demands made of them by the spokesmen for their religion, almost all of whom expect them to be Muslims first and British second (if at all). In the end we cannot answer this problem for them. To us, the choice is obvious – even raising the question in the first place seems pointless, and yet we have plenty of comfortably off, middle class, educated spokesmen for Islam, like Faisal Bodi (on this NG), who seem to be able to convince Muslims they should believe in something called a ‘Muslim nation’. As I said, the big majority of British Muslims say they are loyal to Britain – but the same proportion have been convinced that the UK and USA is ‘at war’ with ‘Islam’ because it supports the removal of Saddam Hussein (who has killed more Muslims than anyone else alive!). The political naivety of this belief is staggering; that Muslims think that government policy over Iraq – as opposed to say, Sierra Leone or Gibralter – is any of their business in particular, is hypocritical nonsense. People like Bodi are making intergartion very, very difficult. But then we don’t have political leaders with the courage to spell it out. The issue is always loyalty and trust, not politics or religion, and if loyalty to the nation state means an end to dreams about Caliphates and Ummahs and all the other Medieval nonsense we have left behind, so be it: that is the choice Muslims must make, or the trust of the people of the nation states which they desire, and which members of all those other religious groups have achieved, is bound to be witheld. How could it possibly be any other way? Sorry, that took ages. I was rambling again. The quick answer was ‘yes’.

Response:

I think I understand your point but I want to make sure. I’ll use American Catholics as my explaining tool.  Catholics came in great numbers to the US starting about 1840.  The moved into and formed Catholic ghettos in the end of the 1800s and early 1900s but also moved out west and far west to much greater spaces,  introducing a more diffuss Catholocism, less Roman if you will. The Pope may have a lot more difficulty with Catholics in the future and the major difficulties is coming from the ghettos, where the old fashion Catholocism was "banked" if  you will. Has Catholocism changed?  Is that bad?  Certainly American-Catholics are very proud of being Americans.  And is this the same issue you mean Jack about the future of Islam? John Berg — – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text –

Response:

> why come here and change it to like back there? > No other immigration group wanted to and kept their religion and culture.

That’s not true, actually. Like I said, this is the most difficult issue raised by Islam in the non-Muslim world. In Britain, the model for integration (or not) for all religious minority immigrant groups always used to be the experience of the Jews. The Jewish diaspora reached England immediately after 1066 (after the Jewish state in the south of France was destroyed), Jewish people rapidly (ie over the next 200 years) became pillars of the community; then, after the Crusades, a king came along who needed to whip up populist feeling among the English (Edward I), they were persecuted (they were forced to wear yellow stars, for instance), and driven out or driven underground. It took another 300 years (the 17th century and Cromwell’s protectorate) before Jews could safely practice their religion all over Britain again. Very, very few British people consider British Jews as any less British than anyone else. They are both fully integrated (ie both minority and majority have adapted to each other) and that despite a history of aristoctartic petty anti-Semitism in England and the conflict today between the supporters and opponents of the Likud (most British people, and half Britain’s Jews, do not support the Likud cause – a very different situation to that in the USA). More to the point, the presence of the Jewish disapora in Britain and Europe generally over the last 1,000 years was crucial to the development of democracy, because they provided (sometimes by their own suffering) a position of moral and religious dissent to the Christian majority (which was lacking in Islamic society, for instance, throughout the same period). We have to be careful in our attitude toward Muslims because it might be argued we are returning to the position under Edward I’s England vis-a-vis the Jews. We do not want to drive out Islam, or drive it underground; we do not want Muslims to be forced to wear green crescent badges (not least because we know what happens afterwards, when people more industrious and committed than the English are in charge of handing them out). Don’t forget, in 1,000 years of mistreatment and integration, Britain’s Jewish community is no more or less Jewish than it ever was. We cannot expect, therefore, in the future, Britain’s (or anyone else’s) Muslim community will become any more or less Muslim than *it* ever was. Intellectually, secularists will always object to Islam because it is irrational, but politicaly we must allow individual people to choose their religion. Islam has a political dimension which threatens the secular democracies which ensure that Muslims are kept safe (which is why Islamism is so hypocritical); but then so does Judaism (look at the religious groups in Israel who want to impose Jewish law on the entire nation). Judaism was rarely regarded as politically threatening in the middle ages because, by being essentially a tribal religion, the number of Jews are necessarily small. The number of Muslims is (as we are always tbeing told) very large, yet it is still as much a tribal religion as Judaism – after all, the number of converts to Islam in the democratic world is negligible (it’s popularity is in the dirt-poor third world, or among marginalised people, prisoners and alienated ethnic minorities). My point is, immigrants *do* bring their religions and culture to wherever they go, and by and large we (in the ‘west’) welcome them for it. Traditional (Hindu/Buddhist) Indian culture (the yoga, the cuisine, the meditation, the music, the art, the clothes, the stories, the movies, even the language) is extremely popular in Europe and America: we don’t ever feel threatened by that popularity. Britain and Europe brought its entire sense of being to America and Australia in the 16th and 17th centuries; we don’t wonder any more whether the natives felt threatened by it. In the end it all comes down to identity: do you (the Muslim immigrant) feel your people are *here*, and your nation is *this* one, or do you believe your people are out *there* and your nation is the Muslim nation. That is the first test we make of immigrants, and we know some Muslims at least are failing it. Once they have pledged their loyalty to Britain (or whatever nation), become British, become democrats, recognised that democracies must be secular, and all the rest of it, and they still want to remain Muslims, then while I think intellectually they’d be deluded, in the end I couldn’t really care.

Response:

Extraordinarily well written.  Allow me another slant, why come here and change it to like back there?  No other immigration group wanted to and kept their religion and culture. John Berg — – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text –

Response:

> Bringing-Up Children in the West > It is one of the most important duties of the parents to protect their > children from falling a prey to the evil and sinful habits and > practices of the western societies.

I can’t help wondering, if western society is so terrible, why live there? [snip] > The responsibility of the parents is to give their child a good name > then to teach them to read the Holy Quran

In otherv words, indoctrinating the child to believe he or she belongs to a tribe which needn’t exist – this strikes me as child abuse. I wonder how its continuation is compatible with democracy. [snip] > Therefore, the parents in this respect should take sensible decisions > and if a world wide marriage bureau for Muslims begins to function in > this direction then many problems of many families could be solved.

And this should be made illegal, if possible. Marrying outside the national community for ‘religious’ reasons looks like a way of dodging immigration laws. Forced marriages are already illegal, but arranged marriages are usually forced marriages by another name. This post shows the depth of the problem the democracies face – how do we protect the freedom of citizens to marry whoever they choose while preventing the parents of a child choosing a marriage partner for him or her, when by doing so they help destroy the very freedoms they seek to exploit? (After all, you’ll rarely see an arranged marriage go the other way – west to east). The hypocrisy is breathtaking. How can anyone be so intent on remaing in the west, while professing to hate it; insist on the right to make his children grow up as western citizens, but refuse to marry a westerner; insist on his right to his religious community’s unlimited access to democratic freedoms, while by simultaneously insisting on the right to unlimited expansion of his faith community he undermines those freedoms? To me this is the most difficult question raised by Islam in the ‘west’: I believe Muslim immigrants should be made welcome, on the condition they agree to democratic norms of behaviour, which includes an acceptance of the secular state, so that the laws of any single faith group cannot dominate. This promise has not been universally forthcoming. Those who conspire to undermine democracy by abusing immigration laws to increase the population of Muslims in democratic countries undermine everything which protects them in those countries. They are sowing the wind.

Response:

Chapter Four Bringing-Up Children in the West It is one of the most important duties of the parents to protect their children from falling a prey to the evil and sinful habits and practices of the western societies. It becomes even a greater challenge for the parents living in the western secular societies because the chances of children being spoiled is far greater in these countries than in most of the eastern countries like Pakistan and India, Iran and the Gulf. And if the Parents do not perform their duties well then it becomes very difficult for the children to remain on the right track. It is just like that if a child does not know how to swim and we throw him into the river then obviously, the child will drown. Similarly, the practice of sex and lust is a river of sin and error and if we do not train our children to swim and fare safely through this river then the children cannot be expected to remain safe from being drowned in these sins. Trust of God Due to freedom of sex  and disobeying the laws of God,   people are dying in Millions by means of sexual diseases, like Aids, Cervical Cancer etc.. The sin of sex and lust can destroy not only the worldly life but also the life of the Hereafter. According to the traditions the most precious (valuable) trust and deposit (save keeping) of Allah that the Muslims have are the Quran and the Ahlul-Bait, and after these two possessions the most precious trust which people have are the children. And man is both responsible and answerable for these possessions as he has been made a trustee over them. Sometimes we see that parents feel satisfied over the fact that they themselves are following the rules and regulations of Islam and performing all their religious duties but their children sons and daughters do not care for their religious duties and obligations, and for this the parents blame the social setup and the social conditioning. However, this is not a good excuse, because it is the duty of the parents to teach their children the rules and regulations of Islam and thus save them from the wrath of the fire of hell. Because the Quran calls out that, "It is your duty to protect yourselves and your close ones from the hell." Moreover, for this it is been stated in a tradition that the Prophet (PBUH) said that, "On the Day of Judgment a shameless (dishonourable) girl would be thrown in hell and right after her the mother of the girl would be thrown in the hell fire, although the mother herself was very modest and used to cover herself from head to toe." At this, the angels would question Allah as to why this treatment is been meted upon the woman. Allah would reply that,

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