I don’t agree with the two guys on the other side of this debate, but Nasser Dashti, arguing that the Islamic world must become more secular, is spot on.
I believe that the time has come for us to adopt the secular, rational, scientific approach, and to remove religion from public life and confine it to the private sphere. Every person is free to understand his religion as he sees fit, and he is free to change his religion, to adopt any school of thought or religion, and to spread his ideas in keeping with the modern rules of human rights.
—Nasser Dashti
Maybe once the Middle East becomes secular, we can start working on fixing the USA in the same way.
Well, in general less religion would be great.
Especially in politics, since it’s a foregone conclusion that god is not helping anyone except the side with the big battalions.
Every person is free to understand his religion as he sees fit, and he is free to change his religion, to adopt any school of thought or religion, and to spread his ideas in keeping with the modern rules of human rights.
Leaving aside the sexism here for a moment, I would recommend not engaging Nasser Dashti as your attorney in any sharia-based legal system.
And really, Nasser D, having gone so far as to say “person”, would it hurt so bad to throw in an “or her” or “their” once in a while?
You did notice that was a translation? Perhaps your beef is with the translator at MEMRI?
Not every language commonly uses gendered pronouns. At least, the ones I know don’t.
empty @ # 3 – Good point.
(Though to my limited understanding, Semitic languages are highly gendered, including different words for “I” & “you” depending on sex.)
And I hadn’t noticed this came from MEMRI: Murdoch-media level skepticism alert!
“Maybe once the Middle East becomes secular, we can start working on fixing the USA in the same way.”
The difference being that this guy, Nasser Dashti, may well have just verbally signed his own government sanctioned death warrant. What he has done takes a lot of guts.
B-but I thought the Moosleems were a big vicious Borg hive mind hellbent on eradicating everything that’s good, democratic, Western, freedom and apple pie from this world!
Together with the purges against the Gülen movement, who want to treat the Quran as living document, one would think that meme has sunk.
Nah, the racist dipshits will just shout “Taqiya!” over and over and over again.
The smug smiling imam looks *exactly* like a smug smiling evangelical priest — and talks the same way.
Pierce R. Butler: I don’t speak Arabic, but in German, for example, “person” is grammatically feminine — die Person. If the word is masculine in Arabic it may be weird or ungrammatical to say “his or her” in that context.
Or it may just be a free translation and the construction in Arabic is structured completely differently. It’s pretty common typologically for the possessive marker to be generic when it refers back to the subject of the sentence, as in that case.
#8
Do ‘smug smiling evangelical priests’ typically encourage secularism? This guy is saying the right things, why dump on him?
The smug smiling guy is opposing Dashti. Dashti is accusing them of only nominally opposing ISIS while espousing the very same regressive religious policies they do.
@8 numeribus
The smug smiling imam looks *exactly* like a smug smiling evangelical priest — and talks the same way.
And?
I have noticed that Christian and Muslim religious types sound the same when chanting. It seems to be some atonal sound that is identical.
There may be little or no difference between a Baptist minister and a Sunni Iman in outlook or ideals.
I have long felt that the bane of Islamism will be as transformative to the Muslim peoples as National-Socialism was to the German (and Austrian) people. Ordinary human beings are starting to wake up and see the reality of staunch religiosity and the damage it causes. I think a similar shock was experienced by the Germans when the horrors of the nazi regime and, let’s call it “German Exceptionalism”, came to light. I am an incurable optimist, so despite the horrors going on today, on these ashes some positive turn for the good may still come. But will all depend on those brave voices like Dashti’s and e.g. also Wafa Sultan’s and others, who will keep on prodding to the establishment until it collapses… somehow, some time in the future, we may hope.
jrkrideau@12: I’m simply remarking how smug assholes look the same across cultures. Almost like they might have a common root.