Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 exptools 1/6/84; site ihuxt.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!floyd!harpo!ihnp4!ihuxt!martillo From: martillo@ihuxt.UUCP (Yehoyaqim Shemtob Martillo) Newsgroups: net.flame Subject: Re: Anti-Arab flaming Message-ID: <364@ihuxt.UUCP> Date: Mon, 26-Mar-84 11:53:48 EST Article-I.D.: ihuxt.364 Posted: Mon Mar 26 11:53:48 1984 Date-Received: Tue, 27-Mar-84 01:26:14 EST References: <503@mprvaxa.UUCP> Organization: AT&T Bell Labs, Naperville, IL Lines: 109 >There has been a large volume of anti-Islamic and anti-Arab flaming >on this newsgroup recently. I would like to make a few general >comments on this, based on my life in the Arab world for 11 years and >my repeated visits there since that time. >1. Regarding Lauren's hair-raising news stories from Saudi Arabia. > SA is indeed a primitive country, and yes, they still do apply > the death penalty via public beheading. Also, they punish repeat > thievery offenders by amputation of one hand (in a hospital). > And Saudi women are extremely repressed by our (or any) standards. Such stories probably get into the Western Press because a reform-minded Alim (Islamic legal scholar) is trying to embarass the ulama (the body of Islamic legal scholars) into change. > HOWEVER - until they struck oil in the 40s, this was a feudal, > nomadic society. They have come a long way since then - > check out some of the other side of the coin. > As for that rape trial - disgusting, I agree. However, > I would argue that N. American standards of rape jurisprudence > are not that much better. Recently in Ontario, a rape > victim was jailed for several days for refusal to testify > against her assailant, who got off scot free. My mother's family are originally mountain Jews of the Fezzan region of Southern Libya. They were troglodytes. When they were troglodytes, they did not engage in such barbarism, and nowadays they certainly do not. Technical backwardness is not an excuse for Saudi behavior. From what I have read some of the Saudi ulama agree. These apologies and rationalizations are somewhat condescending. >2. Regarding the stories of the rape/murder of pregnant Jewish women. > While I have no sympathy for the corrupt, murderous administration of > Assad in Syria, or the off-the-wall practices of Gaddafi, I find > these stories just a leetle hard to believe. They just seem a > touch too cartoonish... the kind of stories Hitler and Stalin used > to fling back and forth when they were trying to cover up their > dirty work. Can anyone substantiate these a little better than > has been done so far on this net? My source for these stories is the American Sephardi Federation in New York. I have asked them to send me the press releases and copies of articles which appeared in the world press. I will post them when I receive them. By the way is the above paragraph supposed to imply Hitler and Stalin did not commit the crimes of which they are accused? > I suppose Arabs have oppressed Jews. I never saw it in Beirut, my > former home town, which had a reasonably prosperous Jewish community, > but I have heard ugly stories from Iraq and Yemen. I would point out > two facts though: There is a world of difference between living with Muslims in a country which is either subjugated by Europeans or under strong European influence and living under Muslims in a country where Muslim power is fully consolidated. > - Islamic doctrine explicitly calls for brotherly coexistence with > "peoples of the book" - Christians and Jews. Islamic law describes a complete system of degradation and humiliation of non-Muslims. > - Historically, Jews living among an Islamic majority have been less > oppressed than those among a Christian majority. Classic examples > of this are Moorish Spain, North Africa, and the Levant. The current Arguable five hundred years ago, certainly not true since except during the Holocaust period. > MidEast dispute has put a terrible strain on this coexistence. Subjugation is a better word than coexistance. >3. Islam, as defined in its holy books and classical tradition, is an > enlightened, tolerant religion. As applied by Khomeini et al it > is something else. This is one reason why it scares the shit out > of me when Falwell and his ilk start making political moves. > By the way, it seems to me that the primary responsibility for Khomeini > and his doings has to lie with the governments of the United States who > aided the Shah with money, arms, and expertise in bloodily eliminating > all alternatives except for Khomeini. In the Muslim world there is no differation between religion and politics (which is not necessarily evil -- the people who developed the separation doctrine merely wanted the power the religious authorities had) Khomeini is a fairly normative Shiite Muslim leader. Islam is not a tolerant religion but expects and promotes the extermination of people of the book through assimilation. Non-muslims who are not people of the book are not under any form of protection whatsoever. >Look, I don't want to put myself in the position of defending corruption >or opression. But it makes me very angry when people on the net point >a finger at such practices and equate them with Islam or Arab nation- >ality. This seems to be very closely akin to the kind of reasoning >that correlates high crime rates in urban centres with "criminal >tendencies in the Negro population". This is not a very nice kind >of thinking. Furthermore, it does nothing to move the world towards >the solutions and progress that are needed so desparately, especially >in the Third World. Many Western practices and ideologies are as barbaric as anything Muslims have conceived. Very few Muslims were involved in the Holocaust. As for rape, I have always been surprised by the American defense tactic of proving the victim's sexual looseness. If a woman is selling it or giving it away, that hardly implies some crud can just take it. Substitute any word besides sex for it.