I mean... I know too many people of that political party of absolute morons that consider themselves experts on Islam. I'd be initially doubtful of anything these hatemongering people spout, that's for sure.
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European Court of Human Rights rules that calling Muhammad a pedophile isn't under freedom of speech
- Thread starter AcademicSaucer
- Start date
Obviously they won't. In that case, people should stop being so defensive when this is brought up.
Liberal or modern Muslims should be all, "Yeah it's crazy and kinda gross but what canya do? I focus on the good stuff, helping the poor and the like"
The same reasons for Christianity really. The extreme fundamentalist branches of the religion thrive on misinformation and hatred. The moderates of both Christianity and Islam have not done a good enough job curtailing this.
there's not one muslim country in the world where islam is freely debated and criticized. anyone who enables this is painting a big red bulleyes on themselves for the fanatics and fundamentals. look at the charlie hebdo attack for example
Leaving out the historical context that literal children were married off to powerful men for political reasons all the damn time in the Middle Ages is pretty egregious. Reducing that to pedophilia as we currently understand the term is revisionist shit stirring.
OP
OP
Would you call it an untrue fact? The ruling here suggests that even if such a remark were uttered after a phrase like "even putting into account the relative social climate of his time" that it's not okay.
Abuse is abuse. Human psychology and the ability to consent are universal, while cultural and historical contexts that might facilitate those abusive situations are not.
If Muhammad wasn't attracted to children and his culture and history essentially forced him to have sex with a nine year old girl, it's still sexual assault and child abuse. It's still sex with a child who cannot consent because her brain isn't adequately developed. If this individual didn't give a DSM-5 diagnosis to a historical figure and just said that he sexually assaulted a child, would that have been better? Or is that still shit stirring.
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I fell like many folks especially in positions of power, whether middle eastern or american, christian or Muslim, want to keep it this way
But we need to start somewhere, hip, cool and moderate Muslims need to start the conversation. Even it's anonymously over the internet.
I don't see how the fact that it might've been common / acceptable at some point in time changes that it is paedophilia..
It's actually pretty similar in Europe for Holocaust deniers.
I don't for a second support the ideas broadly presented by Holocaust deniers (ie "it never happened" or "there's a big conspiracy about it"), but my understanding is that good faith academic research that concludes the number of Jews killed during the Holocaust is somewhat lower than the generally accepted numbers could be considered a criminal act.
These laws are intended to target bad faith/racist Holocaust deniers, however I also think it's important for historians to rexamine any/all historical events, and they should face academic scrutiny, not legal scrutiny.
Edit: I perhaps should have explained my point with more clarity here. It was absolutely not my intent to support any anti semetic agendas. I was simply intending to discuss the complex interplay between religious freedom and freedom of speech. I support both of these, but taken absolutely they can ultimately conflict with each other.
I think academic research and continued analysis of historical events and atrocities is extremely important, so that we as a species can learn from our history, and hopefully we can avoid repeating mistakes from the past. I've had good conversations with people involved in the Khmer rouge trials that are still ongoing, and they've said that continued research from academics has been vital in securing justice.
I think Holocaust denial is broadly speaking inherently racist, and should be punished through legal means. I also think that how some laws are implemented are perhaps too heavy handed, and would prefer to see a situation where free speech laws would grant greater protection to academics. It's feasible that new research could conclude that the number of deaths, or nature of atrocities could actually be far greater than the current consensus, but laws criminalising anyone stating the number is lower could result in good faith academics not wanting to conduct any research in this area, for fear of legal consequences from publishing their findings.
Sadly I know that far right anti semetic individuals use the protection offered by free speech laws to push hateful agendas. As distasteful and harmful as this is, I don't believe it justifies the restrictions on free speech that some current Holocaust denial laws create. I think a better solution is to expand hate speech laws, and to allow greater nuance for consideration of the intent behind speech rather than just the content of it.
Sorry to anyone who was upset by this post. I'll aim to post with more clarity and care in future when discussing such sensitive subjects.
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I mean, I think it's worth mentioning, but I'd still call any adult person involved in this practice pedophile or pedophile enabler.
That's interesting. Sorry to be a pain, but do you have a link to the full document?
That'd be the best way to go about it. But if that were an option for most religions, they would have already taken it. You can't take an important, vital person from any holy book and say, "That person was in the wrong and we live in different times now"...ect. Otherwise you risk destroying the holy book's credibility to those who already believe it and that is not a recipe for growing a religion, unfortunately.
not really
her marries at 6 and consummates her at 9 - 3 years later. the 3 year gap suggests he was waiting for her to more physically developed for him.
of course, if you google you'll find 1000 years of backpedaling reasoning to justify this "duty" of his.
religion is so hypocritical and self serving
What the fuck. It's absolutely freedom of speech. I can say Jesus was a cunt. Doesn't make it true or false but I can say it. Let's not take religion too serious please. I respect everyone believing in something and I see the new sometimes.
Age of consent in Islam is 9 for girls and 14 for boys.
Edit: I searched a bit but couldnt find anything so it might be a Shia thing and not mainstream belief. And for Shia it's 15 for boys and not 14.
Edit: I searched a bit but couldnt find anything so it might be a Shia thing and not mainstream belief. And for Shia it's 15 for boys and not 14.
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Is it? Like, is this part of universally accepted teachings?
Ah so these seminars were advertised by the local Nazi party... Things make quite a bit more sense here.
I tried.
HUDOC doesn't seem to link properly, as far as documents themselves are concerned.
https://www.echr.coe.int/Pages/home.aspx?p=home&c=
Click on Recent Judgements and it's right there ( E.S. v Austria)
I'm not sure if it's Qur'an but it's universal. Actually at these ages you are considered to be mentally developed. You won't be punished for your sins before that age and you don't need to pray before that.
Edit: It's called age of Taklif which means responsibility. After that you are responsible for your actions.
but it's a historical fact
religious superstition should never supersede historical facts
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aisha
religious superstition should never supersede historical facts
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aisha
I mean that's the goal for many who use this fact as the ultimate weapon.
Everywhere on the internet, any and all debate about Islam veers into, "Yeah but your god is a pedo!"
In which case we should be condemning society of the time as a whole, instead of people routinely singling out Muslims. I mean English nobility was still doing this shit 800 years later. But I guess it's not pedophilia when the King of England does it.
And that is fucked up. We've known better for a long time at this point.
That's not how I read it:
That suggests to me that if she backed her statements with evidence and provided them in good faith (rather than as an attempt to stoke islamaphobia), they would've ruled in her favour.
This must have been quite a headache for both the Austrian courts and the EHCR. I expect the Right to really run with this ruling.
It is. And I'd also say that you (or anyone else) should be able to say that and talk about it.
Child Prostitution was a common thing in Victorian England but rarely gets brought up.
I mean the world has been gross for centuries and many peoples have done fucked up stuff
And those scholars can't or won't sanitize most of the stuff for modern audiences
You won't see "ALLAH says it's not cool to do drugs" anytime soon.
I'd be very very careful using terms like historical fact when talking about stuff that was recorded as religious scripture.
Or any historic account from these times.
I searched a bit but couldnt find anything so it might be a Shia thing and not mainstream belief.
The court didn't have issues with evidence that Muhammed had sex with a child, something very well documented and rarely disputed. However, the court found no evidence that Muhammed was a pedophile.
Again, from the ruling:
She should've just said Muhammed raped Aisha, given that nine year olds can't consent regardless of their cultural or historical context. Instead she used a label to describe Muhammed's inner desires instead of just his actions, and the court ruled that is conjecture.
can you please modify your original post then
im super critical on religion but peddling misinformation isn't the way to go about it.
Ah, didn't see that bit. Thanks for explaining.
Cool. I'll take a looksee.
i am not talking about scriptures, am talking about history.
Muhammad was a real human being, a military general, a historical figure. His exploits, raids, battles have been documented. And so were his bad deeds
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The evidence is well understood. Regardless of the intent (and it's not clear to me how they can derive intent the way they have here), the evidence is clearly against this ruling.
The court seems to be very familiar with untrue facts.
I think the problem is partially she didn't provide it or the historical context. As the other poster mentioned, she also claimed to understand the 'inner-desires'/intent of Muhammad and presented that as fact.
In terms of understanding her intent, I need to read the full ruling, but this seems pretty damning:
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Pedophilia is usually defined as a primary or exclusive urge to have sex with children. The distinction the court is making is that this simply wasn't true. The court is making a silly semantic argument that doesn't do anyone any favors.
Of course its pedophilia. And of course society from back then needs to be condemned, on many levels.
I think that it makes a difference that nobody is following a religion that sees the King of England as a prophet, though. The prophet is someone people look up to, whose way people follow.
Criticism of a central religious figure is obviously still relevant from that perspective, no?
If Catholics taught that Jesus had sex with a 9 year old, it would certainly be worth pointing out constantly, imo.
I think it's important to condemn child abuse regardless of the historical or cultural context, I consider it a universal crime. The examples you gave should be condemned as well, and if someone was fined for doing so I'd be just as angry. By being free to call historical acts of rape and pedophilia exactly what they are across time, we implicitly build a culture that doesn't make exceptions throughout the world today either. A culture from 1000 years ago is made up of human beings with the same brain chemistry and capacity to suffer and be exploited as any human being in any culture in the world today, they're only separated by time in circumstances defined by different historical contexts.
My point is that to build a better world we need to not make excuses for past behaviour. We can try to understand them, contextualize them, yes. But we need to affirm human rights that are consistent across time and space. By making exceptions in our value judgement for contexts in different time periods, we leave open the possibility to make exceptions for different contexts in the time period we live in.
If Aisha was 9 years old when she had sex with Muhammed, that was an evil act. I don't really care if Muhammed was compelled to by his culture, people are compelled to do things by their circumstances today as well (if not as common or as on a large a scale). A child was hurt. The conversation is oriented around what this man felt and thought instead of the impact it had on a child. It's important for people to reconcile with that fact.
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It's as fucking stupid as if everyone agrees some historical figure killed a guy but someone was fined for saying it was murder and that's offensive, because it could've been manslaughter.
In my experience these things generally come from a place of condemning Islam in particular rather than wider society. Child marriages are very fucked up on multiple levels and it says a lot about us that we ever figured that a girl being able to bear a child was the one and only criteria we needed to care about when deciding if it was okay to have sex with her*.
If the argument was that we shouldn't lionise people from the 7th century because the values of that period are abhorrent, then I imagine the court wouldn't immediately class it as arguing in bad faith. It's true, there are a lot of subcultures in the world that refuse to move on from society's barbaric past. But it's all of our barbaric past, not just Islam's.
You could argue that it's not a court's place to stamp out disingenuous discourse though.
*As mentioned above this is actually rape but to use the word in that sentence makes it sound like they thought that's what they were doing at the time and it distorts the point a little.
I agree, I just don't agree that this was what this women was setting out to do.
Some Shia perspective. I went to school in Iran and the topic came up often. The teachers response was either that at the time developed much faster and a 9 year old then was as developed as an 18 year old today or that Muhammad married a lot of people who he didn't sleep with. For example if somebody had abusive father he would marry her to get her away from his father.
I find both to be bulshit.
I find both to be bulshit.
Oh, cool. So everyone who rapes children gets called a pedophile... unless they're also a prophet, in which case they get a mulligan and simply had engaged in pedophilia, but they're not pedophiles yet. Maybe after the second offense, right? We'd have to see.
Ridiculous.
Ridiculous.