Muslim Ban Over Handshake. Whaddayareckon Liberals?

[JimC]

Uh... I don't know about Jainism, but do you know the fucking sheer amount of writings buddhism has generated, and the fact that whole sects have been created around this holy text or other? (just check Nichiren buddhism and their obsession with the Lotus Sutra)

Yes, but I don't think they obsess over the actual words as much as some...

[Svartalf]

that I have no idea about, we'd need FBM to tell us about such things

[Forty Two]

I don't trust Jihadis as much as you do.

I don't trust them at all, but Musselmens' views on what the Koran means are pieces of evidence as to what they do mean.

Why are you calling them Musselmen? It's really outdated and silly, and it looks like a deliberate attempt to evoke reactionary responses in people, like saying moslems not muslims.

Whatever meaning your taking is your own mind's invention, isn't it?

Well, you earlier you acknowledged that it was a matter of degree. Now you're saying it's absolute.

I'm pointing out that that's what you're saying. When you look at these words, their meaning is all in your own mind -- your own invention. If you agree with me that the words have meaning that we can glean, to one degree or another, then you're contradicting you're argument.

I still don't know why you use antiquated terms like moslems and musselmen.

They're only antiquated in your own mind, right? I mean, using your own argument, you can't know what I mean by those terms. You invent a meaning in your head. Even if I typed an explanation in answer to your question, you can't know what I mean by the words I type -- isn't that the argument you've been making this whole time?

It's a really reactionary use of language - that's an invention of my mind, of course, and now you've read it a part of you has invented the same concept, and probably feels a little threatened by it, which is why you're getting all defensive.

.
I'm not defensive - I'm making a point using your argument.

You say you don't trust them at all yet you trust them enough to take their views as evidence. I don't trust them even that much. I spit in their faces when they say this is the meaning of the koran.

Why? The meaning of the Qu'ran is whatever is in your mind, and their mind. Surely, your mind is not objectively superior to theirs, or is it?[/quote]
No, it's subjectively superior to the beheaders and stoners. Your mind is too.[/quote]

Is it? On what basis? Your view on the meaning of the Qu'ran is superior because the beheaders and stoners engage in horrid behavior? That just assumes that the Koran must only convey meaning that we view as good.

If, indeed, you are saying we can't know what the meaning of the Koran is, because Mahomet or whomever wrote it is dead, then that applies to you, too. You're just imposing your own biases and creating a meaning in your head, just like the Jihadis are.

Since I'm saying that we can have some reliable interpretation of words that survives the mind that wrote them, I use commonalities and consistencies among interpretations as evidence and indicia of meaning, as well as common usages, and such. Your meaning of a given passage may well be persuasive, but that will be for you to argue. The Jihadis make their argument. They seem to have a good argument that the Koran and Hadith teach that the punishment for apostasy from Islam is death. If you spit at that, then make your case.

If you send me a message containing solely the number 7, the meaning of number 7 is in your mind. When I read it, I create the meaning of number 7 in my mind too. Number 7 may actually be the number of the left luggage box at Victoria Station where you have secreted a large sum of money for me to pick up, perhaps years later. But that doesn't stop the meaning of number 7 being in your mind, and it doesn't stop me having to invent my own meaning for it.

Sure, but all that means is that you can expand upon the message actually sent and add things to it. Nobody said anything about Victoria Station or money. In your example, I sent you a message with only the number 7 in it. What means is "7" -- which means something to the effect of "an integer and cardinal number comprising six plus one, three plus four, or two plus five." Or, perhaps defined as "the symbol for seven things."

The Jihadis' meaning of the Koran is theirs. My meaning of the Koran is mine. I always have difficulty attaching meaning to it when I read it. I don't know why.

It seems to me to mean what it says, generally speaking. There is room to discuss the details, given translation issues and such. However, to suggest that it's impossible to know what the written word means, outside of a purely random invention of our own minds, is plainly absurd. Definitions and usages are based on common understanding, not mere internal prejudice and whim.

I don't "trust" a Pentacostal minister either, but when the prevailing view of Pentacostals as to the meaning of a passage is X, then that is the meaning they ascribe.

Well yeah, but is it correct?

Depends on what "it" is, and so we'd have to look at a given passage and see what the indicia of meaning are. Some passages are vague and confusing, others quite clear. There is no one answer applicable to every writing.[/quote]
Not least because everyone has to invent their own meaning to attach to it.[/quote]

If what you say is true, then communication is impossible. Communication is not impossible.. Therefore....

I don't consider Jihadis to be less Moslem than Moslem.

Oh Gawd, I hadn't actually read this far when I made my comment above about people saying "moslems".

What's the issue, why are you doing all this throwback stuff?

Calling it "throwback stuff" is just your own bias and xenophobia being conjured up in your own mind. It's nothing to do with me, the writer, right?

Yes, it is. I'm just wondering if there's anything else you can write that might enable me to conjure up different meanings.

You can conjure up any meaning you like. Maybe the Koran is the raving of a madman.

I think they are buying into the same post-religious belief the messages can come from the past. If they stopped and thought for a moment, they would recognise, as I do, that the consciousness that wrote the Koran is dead, therefore the stonings and beheadings are an idea of their own invention. That would leave the meaning of the Koran as a quaint academic speculation, which is what it is. You, and they, are assuming a connection to the past that doesn't exist.

I do not assume a connection to the past. I assume an imperfect understanding of the meaning of words on a page which nevertheless is to one degree or another, depending on the passage in question, reliable and understandable.[/quote]
That's a connection to the past.[/quote]

Only to the extent of an acknowledgement that there is a past, and that we have some evidence of it.

In other words, when a person writes "Jack kicked the ball" we do, as you say, create the meaning in our heads. But, the reality is that the agreement among all human heads as to what is meant by the sentence "Jack kicked the ball" is so uniformly in agreement, and an argument from common usage so strong, that we can reliably conclude that a person named Jack made contact with a ball with his foot. The mind who wrote the sentence may be long dead, but the words on the page survived. Maybe the author meant that Jack swung a bat and hit a coconut. We can never really know. But, with some reliability we can conclude that the words mean that Jacks foot hit a ball, can't we?

As with the number 7, apparent accuracy does not create a communication process.

Reliability of meaning creates accuracy of communication. And, Shakespeare's words communicate meaning to the reader. Not all meanings assigned by a reader are as good as any other meaning. You may think "Jack kicked the ball" means "Jane humped the ball." But, as with scientific concepts, your belief isn't necessarily right. You are welcome to it, but it's not born out by the evidence.

We can conclude that they mean that in our heads, yes. But if you're taking it further. You're saying that past meanings is motivating people to murder people.

Sometimes, yes. When a woman was killed because words on a page said thou shalt not suffer a witch to live, then is the interpretation of the passage wrong? Or, is the reality that people in modern times should be concluding that the meaning of the words on the page is that witches should be killed, but that we ought not follow that rule because it is stupid?

We should first acknowledge that the meaning of the words was invented by the reader. From that all things flow.

Invented is an overstatement. Learned is probably more accurate. The meanings of words were learned by the reader.

From your argument, it sounds like we should be saying "we don't know that they really meant for witches to be killed" because the mind that wrote the passage is dead. However, isn't the reality that they really did mean for witches to be killed, but now that we know there aren't witches, we really ought not be killing witchy women.

Again, the meaning invented by the reader must inevitably be different from the meaning invented by the writer. The moment you lock the two things together as one meaning, is the moment you open yourself to a sea of bad faith arguments dreamt up by modern reactionaries using heritage as an excuse.

Not really. It's not about "locking" the meaning meant by the writer with the meaning understood by the reader. It's examining evidence as to whether the reader is reaching the same conclusion about meaning as the evidence shows the writer was using. Writing is a good way to communicate information, precisely because readers tend to understand what the writer meant. It's not perfect, of course, but lack of perfection does not mean "unreliable."

[Exi5tentialist]

Since this entire Forum is a model inside my head, you (i.e., the modelled you) won't mind me elaborating my ideas for my own entertainment.

The Jihadis' meaning of the Koran is theirs. My meaning of the Koran is mine. I always have difficulty attaching meaning to it when I read it. I don't know why.

It seems to me to mean what it says, generally speaking. There is room to discuss the details, given translation issues and such. However, to suggest that it's impossible to know what the written word means, outside of a purely random invention of our own minds, is plainly absurd. Definitions and usages are based on common understanding, not mere internal prejudice and whim.

No that's wrong. Definitions and usages are always based on mere internal prejudice and whim. Infact solely on those things, having been built up inside the brain over many years. That's why you (sorry - not you, I mean the you that I have modelled in my head, obviously) don't like the word muslim and you prefer to use a word that in your mind (sorry, I mean in the mind belonging to you which I have modelled in my head, which is full of prejudices and whims) describes muslims in a more western imperialistic, antiquated and above all alien way - i.e. moslem and musselmen, as a clumsy attempt at a way of sounding as insulting as possible without, unsuccessfully, attaching a tone of sheer childishness to them..

This is all in my head, obviously. I can have no idea whether what you appear to mean is what you mean. Fortunately I don't have to spend too much time bothering with an argument that has appeared in my head having read some words on my screen - that argument being that living men and women are receiving messages from 1,300 years ago and that a dead consciousness that is telling them to murder people by beheading and stoning and as a result of receiving those messages they are acting on them.

I have enough of a grasp of the absurd to realise that probably, if there has been an increase in the amount of beheadings, stonings and brutal executions in the present time then the causes are to be found in the conditions of our present time, so I don't need to waste too much of my time entertaining these irritating voices going round in a cordoned-off segment of my brain which are saying that living people are being directed to do things by an inanimate object. Fortunately my grasp of the psychotic is strong enough for me to reject ideas that are plainly psychotic, even if they do exist only in my head.

[Tyrannical]

It's high time the UN takes a stand against the inherent evil that is Islam. Comparing them to the Nazis does not even come close, and if Satan was real he'd be Muhammed. Let's all fight togethet to stomp out the biggest evil humanity has ever known.

[Svartalf]

problem is that islamic states andf their client countries hold a blocking minority in the UN

[Tyrannical]

That sounds like a job for the UNAI, the United nations against islam.
WWIII lol

[Exi5tentialist]

It's high time the UN takes a stand against the inherent evil that is Islam. Comparing them to the Nazis does not even come close, and if Satan was real he'd be Muhammed. Let's all fight togethet to stomp out the biggest evil humanity has ever known.

Let us instead stamp out all forms of tyranny.

[Svartalf]

starting with NK and Saudi Arabia

[Tyrannical]

It's high time the UN takes a stand against the inherent evil that is Islam. Comparing them to the Nazis does not even come close, and if Satan was real he'd be Muhammed. Let's all fight togethet to stomp out the biggest evil humanity has ever known.

Let us instead stamp out all forms of tyranny.

Agreed, islamists, socialists, communists, and leftists. We'll leave the racists alive to clean up the rest.

[Exi5tentialist]

Let us instead stamp out all forms of tyranny.

Agreed, islamists, socialists, communists, and leftists. We'll leave the racists alive to clean up the rest.

I was thinking of starting a little closer to home

[Forty Two]

Since this entire Forum is a model inside my head, you (i.e., the modelled you) won't mind me elaborating my ideas for my own entertainment.

The Jihadis' meaning of the Koran is theirs. My meaning of the Koran is mine. I always have difficulty attaching meaning to it when I read it. I don't know why.

It seems to me to mean what it says, generally speaking. There is room to discuss the details, given translation issues and such. However, to suggest that it's impossible to know what the written word means, outside of a purely random invention of our own minds, is plainly absurd. Definitions and usages are based on common understanding, not mere internal prejudice and whim.

No that's wrong. Definitions and usages are always based on mere internal prejudice and whim. Infact solely on those things, having been built up inside the brain over many years.

If that were true, then communication would be impossible, or pure happenstance. However, communication is not only possible, but occurs consistently and constantly. Thus, definitions and usages cannot be based merely on internal prejudice or whim of an individual.

That's why you (sorry - not you, I mean the you that I have modelled in my head, obviously) don't like the word muslim and you prefer to use a word that in your mind (sorry, I mean in the mind belonging to you which I have modelled in my head, which is full of prejudices and whims) describes muslims in a more western imperialistic, antiquated and above all alien way - i.e. moslem and musselmen, as a clumsy attempt at a way of sounding as insulting as possible without, unsuccessfully, attaching a tone of sheer childishness to them..

Well, Moslem only means that to you, due to your internal prejudice and whim. Other than your own internal prejudice and whim, the word Moslem has no western imperialistic, antiquated and alien connotation. That's just you inventing a meaning.

To me, it's just a different spelling. Moslem means a person who adheres to Islam. Also known as an Islamic person.

Now, I use the different spellings because, well, fuck you, that's why (not you, personally -- just the PC language police folks). I'm not big on language policing. There was nothing wrong, for example, with the word oriental, as opposed to occidental, etc. But, some folks said that was racist, and the trend went to call people Asian instead, which is stupid. Asians include Turks, Israelis, Saudis, Pakistanis, Russians, Uzbekhs, Indians, Chinese, Thai, Sri Lankans, and other Asian countries. Yet, we don't call Russians who live in Siberia or eastern Russia "Asian," for example. They didn't want several east Asian nationalities to be lumped together as "oriental," so they expanded it and lumped dozens of disparate national and ethnic group under one name, and then limited the actual usage of that term to the several eastern Asian countries that were formerly oriental.

Similarly, Moslem is a perfectly good word -- it's not worse than "Muslim." It's just language policing. You don't see other ethnic groups, for example the English, demanding that everyone around the world use a certain word to describe them. The Norwegians call the English "Engelsk." Oh, the horror. They should call them English, not Engelsk!

This is all in my head, obviously. I can have no idea whether what you appear to mean is what you mean.

"No idea?" I mean you can never be 100% sure of anything, but to say that means you "can have NO IDEA" is a bit overboard. You have an idea, because you are getting response messages back that are internally consistent and using words which convey a meaning to you. The odds of me typing this and meaning something completely different from the meaning you've come to assign the words is pretty slim. I mean, that would be remarkable for there to be two or more internally consistent usages of all these words we are exchanging.

Like, when they decoded hieroglyphics. They couldn't just impose whatever meaning they wanted based on whim. Whim wouldn't have created an internally consistent translation of the hieroglyphs that worked wall-after-wall, book-after-book, tomb-after-tomb. The reality is that the words have meaning, and the meaning was gleaned.

Nobody, of course, is a mind reader, and nobody can be "100% sure" (just like we can't be 100% sure that there isn't an invisible dragon in Carl Sagan's garage) -- but, there is evidence, and the evidence shows what it shows -- it gets us as close as reality allows us to get, which is a useful ability to exchange meaning.

Fortunately I don't have to spend too much time bothering with an argument that has appeared in my head having read some words on my screen - that argument being that living men and women are receiving messages from 1,300 years ago and that a dead consciousness that is telling them to murder people by beheading and stoning and as a result of receiving those messages they are acting on them.

It's just weird that you think the word "Moslem" is antiquated and somehow improper or insulting, while at the same time adopting the position that the word's meaning is wholly based on your own internal prejudice and whim. If that's your position, hold yourself responsible, you racist, you.

I have enough of a grasp of the absurd to realise that probably, if there has been an increase in the amount of beheadings, stonings and brutal executions in the present time then the causes are to be found in the conditions of our present time, so I don't need to waste too much of my time entertaining these irritating voices going round in a cordoned-off segment of my brain which are saying that living people are being directed to do things by an inanimate object. Fortunately my grasp of the psychotic is strong enough for me to reject ideas that are plainly psychotic, even if they do exist only in my head.

They aren't being directed to do things by an inanimate object. They are choosing to do things based on ideology, and that ideology is, in large part, memorialized in words.

If I want to know what motivates a Republican, I look at what's written in the Republican Party Platform. If I want to know what Hillary Clinton thinks of the coal industry, I listen to what words come out of her mouth. If she means something different than what she's saying, or what she hears people say she's saying, then she can correct that. She can say "whoa! When I said 'We’re gonna put a lot of coal miners and coal companies outta business,' you know, I meant we were going to give them healthy raises," well, she can correct that. But, it's absurd to suggest that "we're going to put them out of business" means whatever one wants it to mean based on a whim.

I think where you go wrong is turning an "absence of absolute certainty" in life into "complete whimsy." The fact that we can't be certain about something does not reduce it to complete whimsy.

[pErvinalia]

A Muslim father was fined in Switzerland on Wednesday for refusing to allow his daughters to take swimming lessons at school, in the latest case exposing the challenges of integration in the Alpine country.
Source: AFP
30 Jun 2016 - 8:48 AM UPDATED 10 HOURS AGO
Tweet

The unnamed 40-year-old man was ordered to pay 4,000 Swiss francs (A$5,400 3,700 euros), the ATS news agency said in a report.

He had also refused to allow his daughters to go to camps and other school events, insisting they ran counter to his religious beliefs.

The Altstaetten district court in the northeastern Swiss canton of St. Gallen found the father guilty of among other things violating the law on obligatory schooling and of disobeying previous orders by the authorities, ATS reported

The court reached its verdict after the father appealed a previous ruling faulting him last December.

The prosecutor had requested that the man be sentenced to four months behind bars, in addition to a fine, maintaining that the Bosnian national who has been living in Switzerland since 1990 had resisted integration and had no respect for Swiss legislation.

The family has reportedly been in conflict with the local authorities for years.

Last year, the parents were sentenced by a lower court for refusing to allow their daughters go to school unless they were permitted to wear an Islamic veil.

But the country's highest court overturned that verdict, ruling that the eldest girl should be allowed to wear the veil to school in the name of freedom of religion.

Wednesday's ruling came after a high-profile case involving Muslim pupils refusing to shake hands with their female teachers caused uproar across Switzerland.

Last month, the norther Swiss canton of Basel country reversed one middle school's controversial decision to grant exemptions for two Muslim pupils unwilling to shake hands with teachers of the opposite sex, and threated hefty fines for those who refused to toe the line.

http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2016 ... ng-lessons

[Forty Two]

A father can get fined for not allowing his kids to engage in extracurricular activities? Weird.

I hate siding with Islam on anything, but, frankly, this kind of fine sounds like considerable overreach on the part of the State.

[Svartalf]

Not weird, Swiss... the Swiss are the most conformist of people, so ANY school activities are part of the compulsory schooling, and that trumps your religious convictions. If you don't like it, get find a private school that won't have objectionable activites and that will allow your weird quirks, and put your kids there.