My personal opinion is that in a thread about silly humor, we could do without the thinly veiled religious/political insult posts.
You may find it funny, but it's contrary to the spirit of this site.
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-mouser
My 12½ y/o daughter sent me this link. It's actually got some interesting and some funny stuff there on that site.
[Link removed]
-IainB
Hi IainB,
I think that link was completely inappropriate, both for this thread and for DC at large. Further, I'd appreciate if you kept posts that single out and make fun of particular political or religious views out of the "silly humor" thread. Just because you find some kind of wry, sardonic humor out of it, doesn't mean it belongs in this thread. This thread is meant for lighthearted and fun humor.
Please help keep this thread lighthearted.
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-Deozaan
Sorry, I just now got around to looking through this thread and picked up the above comments.
There is a biblical prohibition in the Old Testament (Leviticus 19:28) against what we nowadays would probably call "tattooing" - "Ye shall not make any cuttings in your flesh for the dead, nor print any marks upon you: I am the LORD." (body markings were associated with paganism in the rabbinic period). This follows as a similar prohibition in the (much younger) Koran - which is soundly based on the Old Testament. Tattooing - particularly of women - had been apparently common at the dawn of Islam, and was similarly regarded as a pagan rite.
Western democracy is generally secular (not governed by or based on religion) and the same goes for the the prevailing laws. However, history shows that the earlier Western governments and laws were generally non-secular (governed by or based on religion - Christianity in particular), and one still sees the custom of (say) swearing under oath with one's hand on a Christian bible (though the Koran is now also sometimes used, I gather, in some parts).
Islamic countries are called Islamic because they are based on non-secular Islamic law and may also be Islamic theocracies (rule by priests in the name of a god). Similarly "The Theocracy" was the commonwealth of Israel from the time of Moses until Saul became King.
It is customary and quite legal in Western societies for people to be tattooed in any way they want. The Maori Ta-moko (a tribal/pagan and customary tattoo) being a typical example. As above, however, this sort of thing is expressly forbidden today in the Koran and under Islamic law.
It is customary and legal by definition In Islamic law for men to marry girls of age 6 and upwards, and have sexual relations with girls (as their wives) under the age of 16 - what in the West is discreetly referred to as the "age of consent". However, this is forbidden by law in most/all Western societies, and the label "paedophilia" is despised and the act of a man or woman having sexual relations with under-age children or sodomising or sexually abusing children is a serious offence and punishable by law.
Any Westerner who would question, criticise or condemn the religious customs or laws of Muslims in the case of men marrying little girls would presumably be ignorant of the fact that their Western laws are much younger than those 1,400 year old Islamic laws permitting this.
Furthermore, they would probably be ignorant also of the facts that it is only Western psychiatry that has invented and defined paedophilia as a psychological disorder, and that has invented and defined a law against under-age sex, where previously no such Western concepts existed, and that apparently members of the British parliament (e.g., including, more recently, a woman member of the Labour party) have been supportive of movements related to the Paedophile Information Exchange and a progressive movement pushing for the liberalisation of "consensual" sex with minors. Thus the continuation of the criminalisation of the latter - in the UK at least - is by no means a given certainty.
I asked my daughter, did she think she was making either a religious or political criticism by pointing out that very funny joke to me?
She said categorically "No", and added that it was both very funny and true (and funny because it was true), but because it was true it was also an unfunny and serious matter to her, and especially to her very best friend Alia (not her real name).
My daughter and her BFF Alia have grown up and gone to school together for about 5 years at least. Alia has just turned 11 and is the daughter of the family of our personally very close friends and neighbours - a man (Alia's father) and his wife (Alia's mother), and another man (Alia's uncle). The two men are doctors, and they fled Iran, with Alia being born a New Zealand citizen. The two doctors knew that only one of them was qualified sufficiently to act as a doctor in New Zealand, and so accepted that they would suffer hardship in income and economic living standards as a result (which they have suffered).
It seems that, when they went back to Iran about 4 moths ago - for the first time as a family - to spend a month with relatives, a local man made a very insistent and persistent proposal to marry Alia (then aged 10), and would only desist after being flatly rejected by another of Alia's uncles who was a respected elder in the village.
The thing is, under Iranian law, the proposal was already supported by default, by virtue of the leading cleric (Khomeini) having decreed "Let not your daughter's first blood be in her father's house".
I am aware of these things, and you would presumably not be, but you can perhaps now understand why it would be incorrect to suggest that I was criticising a religion
per se (I do not criticise it - it is a near-perfect system of laws), and ludicrous to suggest that it might also be a political criticism. It was neither It was simply - as my adoptive older brother Khaled (himself a Pakistani Sunni Muslim) said, "A sad reality", and the joke was "Sadly, funny - the elephant in the room".
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