Thursday, November 05, 2009

Social conservatives and Muslims

The World Values Survey asked respondents when prostitution is justified. Answers ranged from never (1) to always (10).

I combined the eight Muslim countries surveyed and calculated the mean: it is 1.7, indicating that people in these countries feel that selling sex for money is practically always wrong.

Next, I calculated the mean for the ten Western European countries in the sample. Their mean is a middle-of-the-road 4.1.

Finally, I found that the average for Americans who go to church at least weekly is 1.8, and for those who never go it's 4.3.

Social conservatives typically align themselves with the West against the Islamic world in the "clash of civilizations," but it needs to be recognized that in some respects we have more in common with Muslims than Europeans and many secular Americans. Our fight with liberal degenerates is not limited to the U.S. If Europe had any cultural conservatives, I'd happily team up with them, but I think they've gone the way of the dodo.

The overwhelming majority of Muslims, by contrast, are traditional. We need to work with them to fight against liberal cultural imperialism in their countries.  I wouldn't wish the humiliation of gay marriage on my worst enemy.           

20 comments:

  1. Humiliation?

    Let me just make sure I understand this: You're saying we should ally ourselves with a religious doctrine that explicitly seeks our subjugation. Has offered us such fine cultural contributions as a father who runs over his own daughter with a Jeep for being insufficiently devout. Violating the very tenets of freedom of conscience that allowed members of your faith to thrive here at all. Not content with selling out your own heritage, you submit that we should reach out to a philosophy that has given birth to the single most deadly attack on American soil. And just today has killed an even dozen of our finest. In short, you're willing to trade the lives and freedoms of your fellow Americans to assuage your personal sense of shame.

    After such a display of craven cowardice, you have no honor to offend. Nobody can do any worse to you than you've already done to yourself.

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  2. Anonymous1:21 AM

    I'm with jason. Gay marriage? Who cares, that's a red herring, it won't affect you or me one bit. Look at how the muslims act in europe and see if you want to join with them or oppose them.

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  3. Jason, How many millions of Moslems has your government killed in your lifetime?

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  4. In my lifetime the U.S. has acted to defend Muslim lives from aggressors in...

    * Lebanon
    * Afghanistan
    * Kuwait
    * Bosnia
    * Iraq (no-fly zones designed to prevent genocide)

    The majority of our military actions have been in direct defense of Muslims. In so doing, we've bombed Christian Europeans into submission. But do we receive any gratitude? Far from it.

    So be it.

    The answer to your question is, "Not enough."

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  5. "...we should reach out to a philosophy that has given birth to the single most deadly attack on American soil?"

    The Right has missed the boat on the issue of Islam. It turns traditional Muslims into radicals when we claim that their religion is pathological. They believe we are trying to destroy their religion. They need to understand that it's liberals who think religion is evil. We need to drive a wedge between those who believe in terror and those who don't and build bridges with the latter. Indicting more than a billion people as daughter killers is hardly strategic.

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  6. Anonymous6:47 AM

    The idea that muslims oppose prostitution while the Islamic institution of mut'a (wherein Muslim men and women form temporary [and sanctioned] marriages for sex) still exists is absurd.
    From al-islam (http://www.al-islam.org/al-serat/muta/); "In some works a special term is applied to women who participate in mut'a: musta'jara, or 'rented woman'. Mut'a is considered a kind of 'rental' because in general a man's basic aim in this kind of marriage is the sexual enjoyment of a woman, and in return for his enjoyment the woman receives a certain amount of money or property. In defining 'rental' the jurisprudents say: 'It is to gain possession of a benefit in exchange for a specified sum.' [10] This definition applies equally to temporary marriage. In this connection a number of hadith have been recorded in which the word musta'jara is employed. [11]"
    That's prostitution ain't it?
    And muslims claiming to oppose prostitution are practicing another islamic sanctioned institution- taqqiya (deception).
    One can't oppose in words what one practices in reality.
    Unless one is either a muslim or a western politician that is.
    The only thing we in the west have in common with muslims is that we are members of the same species.
    Although one might be forgiven if one were to suggest (as I do) that muslims are a few rungs below us on the evolutionary ladder.
    Have a nice day.

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  7. I wouldn't wish the humiliation of gay marriage on my worst enemy.

    Talk about a WTF moment. You're "humiliated" by gay marriage? Seriously?

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  8. Shades of Dinesh D'souza.

    I think we have particular traditions and they have particular traditions. We may often have low regard for each other's traditions. Cosmopolitan liberals can all congregate around the same fads popular worlwide, but conservatives are naturally going to be more rooted in place.

    There are some Muslims really dedicated to turning the world Muslim. I think we can reach an agreement with other Muslim nations to leave them alone in exchange for leaving us alone. If they think Christian missionaries are such an offense that they need to be banned from their countries, so be it. In exchange, our countries cannot be bound by whatever might offend Muslims here (and that includes the Netherland's Red Light District). If they don't like it, they don't have to live here.

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  9. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  10. Islam merely failed to destroy despite all efforts like algebra
    What are you talking about?

    I get that a lot of conservatives have problems with gays in general (particularly if they think it's a choice and so they are defectors/converts). But I don't see the additional threat from people who are already gay getting married.

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  11. I was going to call you an asshole. But so many people got there first.

    You understand, if gay marriage were legal, you would not be required to marry a man, right? You know this?

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  12. "It turns traditional Muslims into radicals when we claim that their religion is pathological."

    Sure. Islam would never be radical without us. All those wars of conquest and domination from its very earliest history right up to the present day? Just the consequence of insufficient understanding from American conservatives. American conservatives forced Muslims to besiege Vienna, take captives from the shores of England, and made necessary piracy against the fledgling United States.

    Muslims don't have free will. They aren't capable of independent motivation. Of formulating doctrines and goals of their own volition. They're just animals. Reacting by instinct - and in advance! - to American conservatives, the only people who can freely and consciously choose how to relate to the rest of the world.

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  13. Anonymous7:53 AM

    I first heard of mut'a in a Moroccan cafe. This guy - who was traditionally dressed and spoken broken French - explained to me what is was, and it was a very bad custom. "Marriage should be for life".

    So, not every Muslim is responsible for every other Muslim's ideas and practises. Who'd have thought?

    As for gay marriage, the problem is not that two guys say "We're married", it's that everyone else is forced to say "Yes, you are".

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  14. Just Curious11:35 AM

    “I wouldn't wish the humiliation of gay marriage on my worst enemy.”

    Did you move to this conclusion as a result of analyzing data (inductively or otherwise), or as a result of utilizing doctrine ?

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  15. Anonymous11:01 PM

    The thing that pisses people off about gay marriage is that it isn't about wanting to get married as it is about forcing people to condone a certain behavior that they are willing only to tolerate.

    No society has ever had gay marriage because it is so utterly pointless. Gays only have kids voluntarily so there is no need for a marriage contract to obligate them to pay for their fun.

    You know you are way too comfortable as a society when you invent things like gay marriage to argue about. For most of human history people have been desperately trying to survive, so naturally they didn't have time to contemplate gay marriage.

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  16. Just Curious5:00 AM

    Ron,

    For some reason, this post, and especially the last sentence, reminds me of that bizarre rant
    you did several months ago about Jewish bigots. Oh wait, was it about Gentile bigots? You’re such a master of irony. May I suggest that you consider inaugurating a new label category and include these two posts and a few select others there. I’m sure you can guess what it is: the brainfarts category.

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  17. Anonymous10:38 AM

    A lot of Ad Hominem in the comments here.

    (And most don't even seem like people who regularly comment on this blog.)

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  18. Anonymous8:31 PM

    Anonymous---
    Inductivist stated - "I combined the eight Muslim countries surveyed and calculated the mean: it is 1.7, indicating that people in these countries feel that selling sex for money is practically always wrong."
    I suggested that the existence of mut'a, an institution which those muslims who were polled surely must be aware of, renders that disapproval irrelevant.
    You say some traditionally attired guy in morocco disapproves of the institution and state, "So, not every Muslim is responsible for every other Muslim's ideas and practices. Who'd have thought?"
    So what.
    Your moroccan's disapproval notwithstanding, Mut'a (prostitution)is still sanctioned within the context of islam.
    Further, those polled said selling sex for money was PRACTICALLY always wrong.
    Well, when is selling sex for money okay? Muta.
    One shouldn't look to the adherents of islam, an imperialist, sociopolitical movement, for truth or guidance on matters of morality.
    Again, taqqiya.

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  19. Social conservatives really are obsessed with sex.

    (Prostitution is sex plus free enterprise: which of these are you against?)

    Legalising prostitution works a whole lot better than trying to ban it: which never works and just expands the opportunities for organised crime.

    As for gay marriage being "a humiliation", huh? How does it hurt you if two men or two women get married? People are sexually diverse, get over it.

    The whole war against homosexuality is a utopian war against people as they are in the name of people as they are allegedly supposed to be which, when actively prosecuted, has all the brutality, violence and oppression such utopian wars always involve.

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  20. This is a war against traditional America, and the Left is the aggressor.

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