Toadfish Monastery

Now here's a potentially tricky question for Toadfish. What are the limits of religious tolerance when faced with the intolerant? For example, someone who believes:

Quote"[Allah] created the UK: it doesn't belong to you, or to the Queen, or to the Government, but to Allah. He has put us on earth to implement Sharia law."

For more details see http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2006/09/24/do2405.xml

(I don't necessarily agree with the conclusions of that opinion piece by the way).

What is the correct atitude? Is it any different to the one we should take to Christian fundamentalists?

There really is nothing you can do except to stand firm on the platform of secularism and multiculturality.

Under sharia, I would be DEAD.

That, to me, is a reason to fight it....I'm not fond of being dead.

Personally, I don't like the idea of anyone imposing their religious views on anyone else.

Where I live, there was a recent attempt to introduce Sharia law that is in more of a grey area, though: in alternative dispute resolution (ADR).

ADR's an alternative to the normal civil court system.  If both parties agree, they choose a qualified arbitrator who facilitates an equitable solution according to certain rules and laws.  The proposal was to allow arbitrators to use Sharia in place of the normal rules, but only if both parties agreed.

While I don't want someone else's religious values imposed on me, I'm not sure how I feel about imposing an external secularism on the affairs between people who don't want it.

Hmm...

Wasn't there a lot of worry that people would be pressured to go to the sharia courtt by their communties? i remember some women's rights groups being concerned....
  Kat
 

Yes... and in the end, the worries around women's rights were the biggest reason that the proposal was defeated.

Though I don't know if it isn't already a problem.  In many religious communities (Christian, Muslim, and I imagine others), it is discouraged for members to settle their differences outside the church/mosque; religious leaders act as arbitrators already.  I would venture that Sharia law is already being applied (along with pressure to be subject to it), but under the radar, with few safeguards or accountability, and without means for appeal.

For me, it's a murky issue that raises a lot of questions: does acknowledging a practice in law imply state approval of it?  Should adults be protected from coercion by denying them the right to something they say that want?  If so on this issue, why not on others?

Murky indeed.

Quote from: Sibling Lambicus the Toluous on September 25, 2006, 08:32:57 PM
...In many religious communities (Christian, Muslim, and I imagine others), it is discouraged for members to settle their differences outside the church/mosque; religious leaders act as arbitrators already.  I would venture that Sharia law is already being applied (along with pressure to be subject to it), but under the radar, with few safeguards or accountability, and without means for appeal.

I think this is very likely. It's actually quite hard to leave a religous community, too.

[thinking now about the polygynous sect of RLDS and their unschooled little girls.]

Changing the subject slightly (still staying on topic), this is a slightly modified version of a post of mine on Venganza in the UU thread, that is even more (I think) appropriate here.

'Sacrilege'.
What is a reasonable, tolerant person to do when confronted with a usage of a symbol, or place, or object sacred to them, by someone to whom it means something very different, or even trivial, or even radically opposite?

My own take on the matter is "get over it"! I can think of several usages that I encounter reasonably often that quite deeply offend what beliefs I do have. Unless that usage is intended to offend me, I have learned to grumble quietly under my breath (sometimes quietly to my wife - who is greatly amused when I do) about the 'mis-use', and go about my business. I suggest I have a right to expect others to behave similarly (at least to the extent of keeping their objections private).

As I said then, I respectfully disagree.
Part of using a symbol, place, etc, assuming you're a reasonable person, is knowing its context. If you know it's context, you know if your use of it is offensive...an act that belittles the things of value of another culture should be avoided....

Now, I find this different from cultures who go out of their way to force other cultures to comply with them....there is a big difference, in my opinion, between the idea that eating meat (or pork, or beef, or beans) is wrong so we should bomb grocery stores and saying that the only person who can adopt you into the Turtle Clan of the FuggaWugga Tribe of Zanzibibia'ar is someone who is a member of said clan already.

Either we respect the stuff we borrow or we hoard it...the problem with hoards being they spoil.

Quote from: beagle on September 25, 2006, 08:12:42 AM

Quote"[Allah] created the UK: it doesn't belong to you, or to the Queen, or to the Government, but to Allah. He has put us on earth to implement Sharia law."

Mero's coping mechanism is fine. Until the other's belief is imposed. Of course Henry 8 and Elizabeth 1 changed the picture in the hmm  not quite the UK.... but you get the drift. I haven't gone and read the artilce (time-and-brain challenged) but it immediately strikes me that a statement as above is not merely a different person having a different symbol. Given the numbers of people living under Sharia law in the UK it can only be seen as a statement of intent to impose. I.M.V.H.O.

During the discussion on the potential "incitement to religious hatred" offence here there was a lot of discussion on whether there was, or should be, "a right not to be offended" and how that might conflict with freedom of speech.
Comedians (e.g. Rowan Atkinson of Blackadder fame) for example were very concerned they could be hauled before the courts for what was once considered normal comedy banter.  I don't think this issue was ever resolved. Instead the government just tried to say it was only expecting a handful of convictions. Even so it was obliged to backtrack considerably.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/3873323.stm

My opinion is that while misusing symbols or offending religious sensibilities is undesirable, enshrining protection is actually more undesirable, and there is no right not to be offended, only not to be threatened or intimidated.

It's the freedom of speech thing. Either you have it or you don't.

Incitement is an action. If you say the same words but don't incite anyone then that would be ok wouldn't it?

Legislation for the difference between speech and incitement would be excellent but is it possible except in retrospect?

There are also situations in which two (or more) different groups have effectively the same symbol with very different meanings. The most obvious one is the Swastika, but there are actually quite a lot of others. For example, there are groups in which a five-pointed star is significant, to some of them it is offensive to display that star with one point up, to others it is offensive with one point down; my own family crest involves a hand reaching up to grasp a five-pointed star (point down), I have seen family members display the crest with the point up, and even with a six-pointed star (that one is deeply offensive to me)... (That's also one of the ones I mutter to my wife about . In America the 'Stars and Bars' flag is a respected symbol of their heritage to many southerners, to other southerners, and to most northerners it is an overt endorsement of Racism...

It's not always a simple case of someone misappropriating someone else's symbol...

Quote from: NoName on September 25, 2006, 09:50:11 PM
Legislation for the difference between speech and incitement would be excellent but is it possible except in retrospect?

I don't believe so. I'm against hate crimes legislation, too. If someone says that the Jews eat babies and it causes people to go attack a Jewish settlement, then the people who attacked the settlement should be tried for whatever crimes they do, and the ones who incited should be tried for malicious slander, defamation or whatever.

(and a murder done with extreme malice should be handled the same whether the malice was towards gays or the murderer's wife...)

If we applied laws with any kind of rationality, a lot of these speech issues would be nonissues.

Quote from: Sibling Quasimodo on September 25, 2006, 10:14:41 PM
It's not always a simple case of someone misappropriating someone else's symbol...

But sometimes it is. I mean, that's why it comes down to understanding the bloody thing before you use it.

A little more understanding, and a lot more common sense, would do far more than walking on eggshells.

Unfortunately, symbols become bits of 'fashion'...

I wonder, at times, about these people with Chinese "lettering" or some sort of other 'symbolic' tattoos.  Do they know what they're espousing? Are they aware of the deep symbology? Maybe, maybe not. Can we castigate them for being stupid? Well, not to their faces, so, no, we can't..

Do we educate them to the meaning of their symbols, or do we refrain?

At a tattoo shop in Shreveport Louisiana about 8 years ago, I watched an artist try to talk a guy out of a "neat Chinese thing" he'd found on line. It was a symbol with lettering around it, and the guy had been told in was 'spiritual'. It was a feminine hygiene product advert, with lettering that said "for a pleasantly clean --some Chinese word that sorta translated into inner being, but meant, umm, you know--" What was the intent? What was the responsibility of the Chinese reading people in the shop? What was the guy's responsibility to understand what the thing meant? (How many Chinese-reading people was he going to run into in Bossier City?)

Celtic knots, Claddaghs, 'tribal' markings...some of these have meanings extended beyond the  original meaning, through common useage. At what point do symbols again become the exclusive property of one group? And how does one prohibit the abuse of those symbols?