Thread: Should Western Countries try to Intervene in Islamic laws?

Today, I was reading this article which outraged me. The article states that Iran is now threatening to to round up, arrest, and imprison women that are found to be suntanned, because they are in violation of Islamic law. An Islamic cleric even went so far as to blame recent seismic activity on women that revealed too much skin.

After reading this, which is only one of countless examples of the oppression that goes on in Islamic countries, my gut reaction is anger and a desire to help. But my next thought is to wonder if it is my place to do so. America has clearly shown that we think we have the right to interfere in the laws that govern other countries, but is this our place?

I'm still very conflicted on this and yet to form an opinion. What about you all? Do you think the Western world owes it to free women from the cruelty and oppression of these outdated Islamic laws? Or should we live and let live in the name of world peace? Do you think that allowing countries like Iran to garner such power over their people will eventually lead to the spread of their power - which could end in another war? Or do you think that showing we respect their laws and their religion will convince them to leave us alone?

I look forward to your opinions.

Well, clearly what Iran is doing vis a vis suntanned women is utterly outrageous. And unlike the cleric's rumination on the cause of seismic activity (which at least gave us boobquake), there is nothing humorous about what is going on with this offensive against suntanned women. It is the latest in a string of outrages and human rights abuses promulgated by extremists who bend religious dogma to their own ends.

As for your other question--what, if anything, should the U.S. do about these abuses--that is such a difficult question to grapple with. This particular example is focused on the extremist application of Islamic law, but there are plenty of other examples of deplorable and despicable conduct taking place around the world--female genital mutilation in parts of Africa, slavery in Africa and elsewhere, and so on. The U.S.clearly cannot right all the wrongs in the world but that begs the question--what is our proper role in combating these abuses? On polar extremes, we could do absolutely nothing or we could vow to end the practices by any means necessary, including military intervention if needed. Neither option is appealing to me. I believe the best course for the U.S. is to use our position of relative prominence in the world to focus world attention on these issues and try to work with the international community to curb them as best we can, through education campaigns, divestiture campaigns (like those used against South Africa) and behind the scenes lobbying to try to improve matters. There is no easy answer to any of this, but a united world community could do far more than the U.S. can alone to try to eradicate these vile activities.

I think there is a very clear line of other country right to interfere and that is Human rights. can you imagine how many lives of of my family and other jews could have been saved if only America and England had intervened? The problem is that these kind of issues make the western world uncomfortable and politicians and countrys rather push these issues aside until it blows up in their face.

The muslim (and many other faiths) are clearly breaking human rights and I think that gives the right to any other country in the world to intervene, as long as they do it properly, And without breaking human rights in the process of doing this. Like what happened in Iraq. Yes I think a military approach is the only way to go, because in certain situations international communication is bullshit and means nothing. You can't argue with somone that doesn't want to listen to you. You cannot possibly expect fundamentalist religious people to listen to reason. If you could reason with religious people, There would be no religious people.

I lived in many countries, US, UK, Spain, Russia, Israel, Switzerland and others, however one thing that I have learned after spending time in all these different places is that moralizing and theorizing while serious abuses go down is a dangerous way to approach world politics. Many people nowadays say that there are international organization, international courts, UN and other such nonsense that will be able to prevent abuses... however recent history, at least on the macro level, show otherwise... to many abuses happen and all the international organizations do nothing, and in most instances not for the lack of trying, but simply because they have no clout. What's the worse thing the UN can do? in 99.9 percent of the instances it would be some economic sanctions that now days don't scare anyone because there are enough nations that will trade with you despite any sanctions. Some may say that the Security Council could authorize military action... but this will never happen unless there is a unanimous vote, and there hasn't been one in forever. As an example look at the UN forces in the Israel-Lebanese border... the have achieved absolutely nothing, in fact I will go so far as to say that they made the situation worse since they prevent IDF from ensuring that the Hizballa doesn't get any more weapons.
Either way, people may point out the situation with US and Iran, and say, see, the US intervened over the objections of the whole world, and look where it got them?! However in my slightly uneducated opinion, the US found itself in this predicament mostly because it did not sufficiently commit... had there been more continous support for the military action and less outsourcing to private contractors then i believe the situation would be quite different.

And finally, I am a strong believer in the conundrum that if you see wrongs being committed and you have an ability to correct them, then do, and deal with whatever consequences there may be later. Ask yourselves this, would you rather live in the world where all these wrongs happen, and the world loves the "politically correct" US, or where the wrongs are corrected but the US is not loved as much because it chooses to do what is right and not what is politically correct?

I think that they should leave them to do what they want in their country, but in western countries they need to stop the from letting us celebrate Christmas, and also stop them from walking into banks ect, with their whole face covered. If they come to a western country they must abide by our way of life, otherwise go back home.

Firstly, I'd like to state that I do not endorse the way how Muslim Law tread women nor I share the same point with them, however, this issue is not this simple.

We live in a very diversified world, there are more than 150 countries and 4200+ religions (faith groups) and they all happen to exist on this very plant called Earth. Sometimes, agree to disagree is the best way to go. We should not judge people using the Western value and understanding, this is just erroneous. We grow up in different environments, something that is very common in one culture can be unacceptable or even offensive in another and we cannot have a unanimous rule for everything nor should we use military forces to push our values and understanding to others.

Regarding to this claim "they can do whatever they want as long as they stay in the boundaries of human rights". Again, there is no unanimous rule for human rights and should not be one. The very human rights we talk everyday is based on western values. Furthermore, I think the fundamental of human rights should include "the right to believe and exercise your religion", and religion laws are one way to exercise your religion. Moreover, we are so used to see and feel the world from our own perspectives and established a rather confined definition of 'human rights', which blurred our vision and the ability to understand the rest of the world.

And, nobody is forced to be a Muslim. Well, this claim may not be 100% accurate, people are born Muslim if they are in Muslim families. But let's look it this way, it happens here as well, Christian and Catholic parents have their children receive baptisms before the children can understand what religion is. Yes, it is easy for westerners to convert later in their life and much more difficult for Muslims. In some countries, to convert to non-Muslim, you have to fleet the country and it is very hard for them to do so. I can board a plane and travel to a different country anytime I want to, and it may take up to 3 days to apply a Visa. However, we have so many immigration policies to some countries, it is practically impossible for them to leave the country, if they decide to do it illegally, they will end up somewhere in a detention camp which makes the hush Muslim law seems to be much nicer.

Last but not least, in Australian, there are a group of people who are labelled as "The Stolen Generation", please check wiki for more background information. Basically what happened is, in the name of 'human rights' and 'better welfare', Australian government took the young kids from they Aboriginal families and force-feed them with western values, most of the kids ended up in very tragic situations, not knowing who their parents are and don't have a decent job. Last year, Australian government finally admitted the wrong doing and apologised to them, however, the damage has been done. The pointed of this story is: sometimes, when we think we are doing something right or something good for people from a different background, we may be so blindfolded so that we ignored the very fundamental rights that they are entitled to - to live in the way they want to and preserve their culture!

One more point, sexual abuse towards children and women is rather common in the Catholic church as well, how come no one threatened military operation against Vatican? Is it some sort of double standards?

PS:
I wrote the whole thing as who I am, a atheist :D

my opinion leans more towards the Constitution of the United States of America where in its first amendment provides freedom from infringement by state or government on the people against religion or speech hence freedom of religion in the US and for us the US to become the religion police and tell other countries how to conduct themselves regarding their religious beliefs is hypocritical of our founding fathers beliefs, furthermore it is my belief that the Muslim religion is a religion that although practice in the US is not integrated in the laws of the US because of its infancy in this country and although I do not condone the atrocious behavior of the laws of the Muslim religion towards women I believe it is not grounds for us to intervene with the laws of any country over. If any thing why not go after the government of said country for human rights violation due to the atrocity committed against humanity because of their religious belief, again we must remember that a lot of the countries were this is being practiced are govern by Dictators disguise as Presidents, ie; animals dressed as humans , not in every Muslim practicing country.

Saudi Arabia is the heart of Islam. I don't see or have not seen any human rights being abused there. As a matter of fact, they are one of very (verryyy) few nations in the world that actually support their citizens (financial means, housing, careers, medical, everything simply put). We then have Jordan, Turkey, Morocco, Egypt that allow their citizens freedom, the same freedom U.S. gives to its citizens. So, on the note that Islamic countries are not morally humane, that’s a bunch of crock. People just need something to gossip about. J

I feel that Islam was a very much liked religion until 9/11. After that westerner’s said it was time to call this peaceful yet strong group of people out and tear them apart. “We have forced everybody to be at our mercy, why not take this group as well, if not now, never” The westerner’s forgot about the extremist who crossed borders and killed 5,000 people. They also don’t bother taking out their own pathetic influences of militias within their countries. But that's going a little off subject.

To stay on subject, I would like the few of you who stated that the women are treated wrong to please elaborate. From what I have seen, the women of Islam have just as much rights and freedom as the men do. My best friend’s Dad and Mom have the most amazing relationship I have seen, I want to be like them, the humbleness, the love, the care… I have come to see that a lot of the opinions (worldwide) are based upon the scum of people of this religion (e.g Saddam, Osama, gosh is there anybody else to name? really?). What happened to respecting what a religion truly means… Westerner’s love to point fingers and make decisions for others … “Now let’s hang em, why should we allow him to rule this land and take over all of it, that’s not fair, we never got to do that” (sarcastically speaking)

To answer the question ... In my opinion it's really not a question, it's more of a statement. "Western countries will intervene in ..." is what it truly should be, and the question “What do you think about that?” :)~. I feel this is what western countries do, intervene (stick their nose in everything), it is what they are best at, how did United States of America become (europeans intervening on indians – pathetic indians) “We must make them like us, assimilate, or live up to the consequences” “Fuck it assimilate them”. It will not change anytime soon. Don't get me wrong, I was born and raised in the US, and I love it in this western nation, but to classify us as westerner’s, a region, a direction, was ill. I honestly would not want to be anywhere else, but I tend to disagree with a lot of the decisions made by westerners, atleast 50% it leads to nothing good. Iraq in shambles, Afghanistan is being raped now, innocent people locked up in the bay, people interrogated for no reason, etc, etc, etc. History continues to repeat itself. Bleh!


p.s. nobody should take any offense to this, hell don’t even reply if your offended. I understand that what I spoke of was in the past, but still, there are consequences to actions made no matter when they are made. I thought your mom taught you that! Lol. However I would love to hear your opinions, not what you believe is a fact, and do not twist my words ask me to explain myself if something doesn’t make sense. Thanks. Have a good day.

Dictators disguise as Presidents. vs. the presidents who wrote the constitution

Shadowbuild, I am an idiot, so you'll need to explain to me what the difference was between the europeans to raped and killed indians then created a constitution and dictator's who are trying to rid their country of the ones that don't follow him?

Originally Posted by shadowbuild

my opinion leans more towards the Constitution of the United States of America where in its first amendment ........

This is exactly what I was trying to show in my post. In order to understand the world, you have to step up, step out from your own culture and background. To be confined in your small little world is no benefit of understanding a different environment at all.
Moreover, this is not a US issue, this is a world issue and US Constitution has nothing to do with it at all and nobody cares what US Constitution says (nor should they) in a foreign country at all (no offense)