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 Topic: Muhammad & Aisha article in Guardian... comment now!

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  • Muhammad & Aisha article in Guardian... comment now!
     OP - September 17, 2012, 01:25 PM
    http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2012/sep/17/muhammad-aisha-truth
    .
  • Re: Muhammad & Aisha article in Guardian... comment now!
     Reply #1 - September 17, 2012, 01:37 PM
    It's funny how whenever someone writes something that tries to defend Islam and the legacy of Muhammad, citations are almost always totally absent. Whereas those that criticize Islam usually provide a lengthy list of citations to the original hadiths and Quran. And then they accuse the critics of Islam of spreading lies and misinformation.

    The ammount of times I have seen someone make the statement "Islam radically improved the rights of women in the Middle East" without providing a single reference to back it up.....
  • Re: Muhammad & Aisha article in Guardian... comment now!
     Reply #2 - September 17, 2012, 01:44 PM
    Quote from: Shahid Raza on September 17, 2012, 01:25 PM
    http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2012/sep/17/muhammad-aisha-truth




    hmm! sophistry of converted Muslim women who could not keep her identity due to her marriage to a  a turkish Muslim robot..

    In the name of allahs/gods/and religious rubbish  such people can defend murders, child marriages, looting   and barbaric rituals for the sake of their allahs, criminal activities of their messengers and  messiahs of their respective religions..
    Do not let silence become your legacy.. Question everything   
    I renounced my faith to become a kafir, 
    the beloved betrayed me and turned in to  a Muslim     
  • Re: Muhammad & Aisha article in Guardian... comment now!
     Reply #3 - September 17, 2012, 01:45 PM
    This article brought to you by a deluded hijabi.   bullshit
  • Re: Muhammad & Aisha article in Guardian... comment now!
     Reply #4 - September 17, 2012, 01:54 PM
    Quote
    I get the argument that it was not uncommon for girls to be married off at young ages in times past, the difference however being that we do not worship those people as prophets and consider those actions to be worthy of praise and examples to be followed.

    Quote
    This piece is really interesting, considering I knew nothing of the story of Aisha, apart from the criticisms made about her age. I struggled to take criticism of Islam seriously when it fixated on the unverified age of somebody who lived hundreds of years ago, but I understand that if Aisha's age enables countries like Saudi to argue for lower marriage age laws then it is still somewhat relevant. However, Myriam says:

    "Those who manipulate her story to justify the abuse of young girls, and those who manipulate it in order to depict Islam as a religion that legitimises such abuse have more in common than they think. Both demonstrate a disregard for what we know about the times in which Muhammad lived, and for the affirmation of female autonomy which her story illustrates."

    Although Aisha sounds (from your description) to be an intelligent and capable woman, I'm not sure how her story is one of female autonomy at all. At best, it sounds like she managed to lead a relatively free life within the parameters set for her by first her father, and later her husband.

    ^ right on the money Afro
    "Life is not a matter of holding good cards, but of playing a poor hand well."
    - Robert Louis Stevenson
  • Re: Muhammad & Aisha article in Guardian... comment now!
     Reply #5 - September 17, 2012, 02:05 PM
    This is a deliberate piece of misinformation.

    The fucking audacity of someone who titles their article "The Truth" when they are consciously and willfully lying like that astounds me.
    Too fucking busy, and vice versa.
  • Re: Muhammad & Aisha article in Guardian... comment now!
     Reply #6 - September 17, 2012, 02:42 PM
    Billy's comment is very good.  Afro

    It has been "recommended" 54 times.   cool2
  • Re: Muhammad & Aisha article in Guardian... comment now!
     Reply #7 - September 17, 2012, 02:51 PM
    I haven't commented on it. My name on the Guardian is billycoem1
    "we can smell traitors and country haters"


    Quote from: arX on May 01, 2011, 03:33 AM
    God is Love.
    Love is Blind. Stevie Wonder is blind. Therefore, Stevie Wonder is God.

  • Re: Muhammad & Aisha article in Guardian... comment now!
     Reply #8 - September 17, 2012, 03:00 PM
    Really?

    There is a someone called Billioislove who has a writing style just like yours and brings up the same kind of issues that you often bring up.
  • Re: Muhammad & Aisha article in Guardian... comment now!
     Reply #9 - September 17, 2012, 03:00 PM
    The best comment is from 'Testosterone', quoting from the article:

    Quote
    ... five centuries after Muhammad's marriage to Aisha, 44-year-old King John of England married 12-year-old Isabella of Angoulême.


    He says quite simply:

    Quote
    But we don't worship King John of England.


    That is basically it, isn't it? Its not that 1400 years ago this kind of thing wasn't so abnormal. Its that its being held up as part of a Prophet who is supposed to be a shining example to everyone.

    "we can smell traitors and country haters"


    Quote from: arX on May 01, 2011, 03:33 AM
    God is Love.
    Love is Blind. Stevie Wonder is blind. Therefore, Stevie Wonder is God.

  • Re: Muhammad & Aisha article in Guardian... comment now!
     Reply #10 - September 17, 2012, 03:02 PM
    Quote from: Tonyt on September 17, 2012, 03:00 PM
    Really?

    There is a someone called Billioislove who has a writing style just like yours and brings up the same kind of issues that you often bring up.


    Yep. I've been writing on Guardian CIF from time to time for ages under billycoem1.

    "we can smell traitors and country haters"


    Quote from: arX on May 01, 2011, 03:33 AM
    God is Love.
    Love is Blind. Stevie Wonder is blind. Therefore, Stevie Wonder is God.

  • Re: Muhammad & Aisha article in Guardian... comment now!
     Reply #11 - September 17, 2012, 03:07 PM
    Well then maybe Billioislove is someone that was inspired by you and has a secret crush on you.
  • Re: Muhammad & Aisha article in Guardian... comment now!
     Reply #12 - September 17, 2012, 03:09 PM

    That could be any one of millions  Grin
    "we can smell traitors and country haters"


    Quote from: arX on May 01, 2011, 03:33 AM
    God is Love.
    Love is Blind. Stevie Wonder is blind. Therefore, Stevie Wonder is God.

  • Re: Muhammad & Aisha article in Guardian... comment now!
     Reply #13 - September 17, 2012, 03:12 PM
    LOL! I was just about to ask Tonyt to help me locate it[billy's comment]!

    A woman[?] in the comments says "Islam honours women". {This appears to be its biggest USP to western women!}

    No wonder politicians get away with blue murder. ALA you have a convincing mission statement,that makes enticing promises, you are all set !
    Galloway,like many others before him and many others after him[if people's mindset doesn't change!] know it and  exploit it to the hilt.


    The World is my country, all mankind are my brethren, and to do good is my religion.
                                   Thomas Paine

    Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored !- Aldous Huxley
  • Re: Muhammad & Aisha article in Guardian... comment now!
     Reply #14 - September 17, 2012, 03:17 PM
    I find the Guardian to be the most frustrating newspaper out there. Because in general its politics and worldview are most aligned with mine out of all newspapers. There are some great journalists with them, from sport to politics to culture, literature (it has a fantastic books section)

    But when it comes to religion they kind of lose the plot a little. Its not that there's anything wrong with giving space to religious Muslims who want to give apologia, its that they so often don't seem to provide space for the other side of the story.
    "we can smell traitors and country haters"


    Quote from: arX on May 01, 2011, 03:33 AM
    God is Love.
    Love is Blind. Stevie Wonder is blind. Therefore, Stevie Wonder is God.

  • Re: Muhammad & Aisha article in Guardian... comment now!
     Reply #15 - September 17, 2012, 03:20 PM
    Quote from: hypocrucifier on September 17, 2012, 03:12 PM
    A woman[?] in the comments says "Islam honours women". {This appears to be its biggest USP to western women!}


    What does that mean? I just get suspicious when honour codes are used in the context of religion and Islam in particular. It just sounds sinister.
    "we can smell traitors and country haters"


    Quote from: arX on May 01, 2011, 03:33 AM
    God is Love.
    Love is Blind. Stevie Wonder is blind. Therefore, Stevie Wonder is God.

  • Re: Muhammad & Aisha article in Guardian... comment now!
     Reply #16 - September 17, 2012, 03:32 PM
    Quote from: billy on September 17, 2012, 03:17 PM
    I find the Guardian to be the most frustrating newspaper out there. Because in general its politics and worldview are most aligned with mine out of all newspapers. There are some great journalists with them, from sport to politics to culture, literature (it has a fantastic books section)

    But when it comes to religion they kind of lose the plot a little. Its not that there's anything wrong with giving space to religious Muslims who want to give apologia, its that they so often don't seem to provide space for the other side of the story.


    Well I think this is generally the case of the left in the West. I consider myself to align with the left on most issues except their attitude to Islam. I have trouble rationalizing why the left pays so much lip service to Islamic apologia. I used to think that it was simply ignorance about Islam. But that doesn't explain why some leftists who have spent their lives studying the Middle East and are even fluent in Arabic stilll fail to recognize or discuss amy of the unsavory apsects of Islam.

    The only explanation I can think is a combination of being afraid of violence and not caring enough about it. (i.e. Islam does not affect them or their own families so why risk upsetting a bunch of angry fanatics when your own society has nothing to gain from it). But still this does not explain it fully because usually leftists will go out of their way to highlight the plight of some poor, opressed people on the other side of the world. The only explanation can be that the threat of violence is so real and so strong that they decide it is not something they want to tackle....
  • Re: Muhammad & Aisha article in Guardian... comment now!
     Reply #17 - September 17, 2012, 03:48 PM
    I think it's simpler than that Tonyt. As you alluded to in your post, the Guardian prides itself in taking the side of the underdog, of the oppressed, of the one who has had the trampling done upon them. As such, it goes to great lengths to point out the other side of the coin. In this case, they have decided that Islam has received its fair share of criticism of late, and they have decided in their infinite wisdom, that an apologetic article tackling one of the main criticisms contained within Scary Movie XII, is the best 'leftist' stance to take at this point.

    I myself am bitterly, almost sickeningly, disappointed that my favourite newspaper is behaving so misguidedly. It takes some retarded logic to defend a paedophile against a weight of historic evidence. Shame on you Guardian.
    Hi
  • Re: Muhammad & Aisha article in Guardian... comment now!
     Reply #18 - September 17, 2012, 04:06 PM

    I think the reasons are complex. I think some of it comes from a good place. I think the impulse to defend Muslims from bigotry is in the best tradition of the Guardian. But at the same time they kind of fall for the whole line about how being critical of aspects of Islam is always part of anti Muslim bigotry. And that's a really dangerous error to make. I think they are in a position to deal with that distinction and then take control of the debate from the Left. Instead they fall too easily for it and thus miss a great opportunity to take ownership of the whole issue.
    "we can smell traitors and country haters"


    Quote from: arX on May 01, 2011, 03:33 AM
    God is Love.
    Love is Blind. Stevie Wonder is blind. Therefore, Stevie Wonder is God.

  • Re: Muhammad & Aisha article in Guardian... comment now!
     Reply #19 - September 17, 2012, 04:18 PM
    It's not so much the cheerleading a pedophile part that I have a problem with. It's that she's using recent events as a platform to do so while bellyaching about "Islamophobia" yet again. Cheap, cowardly, opportunistic moralising.

    I suppose it's too much to ask that professional apologists like Myriam should use this opportunity to condemn the violence raging in the world right now due the fanatical devotion to her favourite superhero, rather than use it to further her victim mentality and sprinkle her special entitlement dust all over the shitty mess.
    Too fucking busy, and vice versa.
  • Re: Muhammad & Aisha article in Guardian... comment now!
     Reply #20 - September 17, 2012, 04:38 PM

    I wish you would post that under the article Ishina, but you'd probably get censored.

    No doubt there is a lot of abusive stuff under articles like this that is reasonably deleted because its ad hominem abuse, but even stuff like that, which is robust but insightful, sometimes gets censored on their religious threads.
    "we can smell traitors and country haters"


    Quote from: arX on May 01, 2011, 03:33 AM
    God is Love.
    Love is Blind. Stevie Wonder is blind. Therefore, Stevie Wonder is God.

  • Re: Muhammad & Aisha article in Guardian... comment now!
     Reply #21 - September 17, 2012, 05:03 PM
    Quote from: hypocrucifier on September 17, 2012, 03:12 PM
    LOL! I was just about to ask Tonyt to help me locate it[billy's comment]!


    It is not Billy's comment as he explained. But I will help you locate it anyway.

    It is on page 9 of the comments about half way down (at the time of this post). Right now it has been recommended 673 times, seems to be way more than any others. If that many people recommended it then that means that at least that many people read it! I wish they provided a way to sort by the number of recommendations. It begins with:

    "Pure hagiography.

    The death taboo that surrounds criticism of Muhammad is augmented by the idea that any criticism of him and his conduct is part of an 'orientalist' and Islamophobic slander......"

  • Re: Muhammad & Aisha article in Guardian... comment now!
     Reply #22 - September 17, 2012, 05:16 PM
    I hate how Western women who are supposed to be well-educated (compared to many women in the Arab world) get brainwashed and convert to Islam and help breed ignorance (Islam honors women, etc)

    Marrying young girls can be thought of as something cultural, accepted in Mohammed's time and in the modern times in this culture. But cultural things can be condemnable! Marrying young girls isn't justifiable and Mohammed, if he were to care about humanity and knew what was wrong in his culture, wouldn't marry Aisha. He wouldn't even marry too many wives if he knew what kind of really bad consequences he would have on the lives of many women/children today!  

    And maybe he didn't marry a second wife when Khadija was alive because Khadija was rich and strong enough to divorce him and stop giving him money whenever she wanted -.- She said she was a businesswoman! I think that article is stupid.
  • Re: Muhammad & Aisha article in Guardian... comment now!
     Reply #23 - September 17, 2012, 06:04 PM
    On the Guardian's attitude, it is arguably anti semitic.  Paul Berman Flight of the intellectuals gives detailed fully referenced arguments about how the Islamic world has pretended to be the under dogs but at the same time supporting strongly fascist and tyrannical thinking.

    I subscribe to a Jewish twitter feed that looks at how the Guardian reports Israel.  It is very interesting.

    I subscribe to the Guardian, and am not sure if I should cancel!
    When you are a Bear of Very Little Brain, and you Think of Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it.


    A.A. Milne,

    "We cannot slaughter each other out of the human impasse"
  • Re: Muhammad & Aisha article in Guardian... comment now!
     Reply #24 - September 17, 2012, 06:07 PM
    Quote from: Yume89 on September 17, 2012, 05:16 PM
    I hate how Western women who are supposed to be well-educated (compared to many women in the Arab world) get brainwashed and convert to Islam and help breed ignorance (Islam honors women, etc)


    If you asked her if she thought it was OK for young girls to be married to adult men,  middle aged or old men, she would of course say that such an idea is repulsive to her.

    If you said to her that such things happen in some places in part because it is deemed to be 'acceptable' because Muhammad did it, she's in a tight corner. Because if you accept Islam and start to revere Muhammad you have to accept his sunnah in every respect. Because if you reject or criticise it you're rejecting and criticising the Prophet and that is blasphemous.

    So I guess the response then is to deny it, or to claim that pointing this out is Islamophobic, or just to stick your head in the sand.

    But it shows how if you are a westerner who converts to Islam, you really have to tie yourself in lots of awkward knots to square basic liberal ethics with aspects of the sunnah and Islam as practised by much of the schools of Islam.
    "we can smell traitors and country haters"


    Quote from: arX on May 01, 2011, 03:33 AM
    God is Love.
    Love is Blind. Stevie Wonder is blind. Therefore, Stevie Wonder is God.

  • Re: Muhammad & Aisha article in Guardian... comment now!
     Reply #25 - September 17, 2012, 06:38 PM

    Just scanned the comments. Whilst there are some good replies, its amazing how the apologia is accepted - some are even granted 'Guardian Picks' status.

    In no other context would anything approaching this be platformed on a 'progressive' site, about the contextualisation of this kind of thing, whilst (disingenuously) brushing aside the special status of divine reverence and power Muhammad's actions hold to this day. Its remarkable the kind of sway Islam has with some parts of the left, its like they have been hypnotised by it.

    Credit where its due though, there is some dissent from a Guardian journalist under the line (IsabellaMackie)
    "we can smell traitors and country haters"


    Quote from: arX on May 01, 2011, 03:33 AM
    God is Love.
    Love is Blind. Stevie Wonder is blind. Therefore, Stevie Wonder is God.

  • Re: Muhammad & Aisha article in Guardian... comment now!
     Reply #26 - September 17, 2012, 06:49 PM
    I've been doing the same arguments with liberals, feminists and atheists on facebook. banghead
    "Blessed are they who can laugh at themselves, for they shall never cease to be amused."
  • Re: Muhammad & Aisha article in Guardian... comment now!
     Reply #27 - September 17, 2012, 06:59 PM
    This just makes me want to puke:

    Quote
    Those who manipulate her story to justify the abuse of young girls, and those who manipulate it in order to depict Islam as a religion that legitimises such abuse have more in common than they think. Both demonstrate a disregard for what we know about the times in which Muhammad lived, and for the affirmation of female autonomy which her story illustrates.


    Do you see what Myriam Francois-Cerrah does here? She equates those who contest the traditional account of apologia that she spouts, and the literal problematics of sunnah in this regard, as being morally on par with those who enable paedophile child marriage in the Muslim world today.

    She considers advocating child marriage and pointing out the invidious nature of Muhammad's marriage to Aisha and the tradition of Sunnah as being equal.

    How dishonest, inverted and outrageous can you be? This kind of faux progressive apologia is more obnoxious and disgusting than a straight up Salafi who just says it straight without any attempt to make concessions for anyone.

    "we can smell traitors and country haters"


    Quote from: arX on May 01, 2011, 03:33 AM
    God is Love.
    Love is Blind. Stevie Wonder is blind. Therefore, Stevie Wonder is God.

  • Re: Muhammad & Aisha article in Guardian... comment now!
     Reply #28 - September 17, 2012, 07:17 PM
    Quote from: billy on September 17, 2012, 03:17 PM
    But when it comes to religion they kind of lose the plot a little. Its not that there's anything wrong with giving space to religious Muslims who want to give apologia, its that they so often don't seem to provide space for the other side of the story.

    Not even that. Most of  the Guardianistas who come up with crap like this are secular atheists who are critical of the church when it come to abortion, gay marriage etc. But when it comes to Islam they overextend liberal tenets like equality and tolerance and come up with the most putrid risible articles defending Islam.
    19:46   <zizo>: hugs could pimp u into sex

    Quote from: yeezevee
    well I am neither ex-Muslim nor absolute 100% Non-Muslim.. I am fucking Zebra

  • Re: Muhammad & Aisha article in Guardian... comment now!
     Reply #29 - September 17, 2012, 07:27 PM
    Quote from: billy on September 17, 2012, 06:38 PM
    Just scanned the comments. Whilst there are some good replies, its amazing how the apologia is accepted - some are even granted 'Guardian Picks' status.


    I don't know, the most "recommended" comments are those that are critical of the article. What does that say about online Guardian readers in general?
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