At 05:51 PM 12/20/2012, a certain author wrote:
Which part of what I said do you think is untrue?
Note, I am willing to discuss it as long as you do not throw
insults. If you are so convinced that I am wrong and find it
necessary to insult me to prove a point, then it is best that we
stop the discussion.
The comment above was written in response to a comment from another
Vortician noting that the posts of this author were nonsense and
beyond boundaries. Other than that, there was no "insult," except for
a claim that the writing showed ignorance. Which, of course, it does.
When someone consistently brings up and repeats claims, without
necessity or evidence, that are obviously intended to be as offensive
as possible, we call that "trolling." That's not a personal insult,
it's a description of behavior. Whether this list wants to prohibit
extensive trolling is up to the list owner. The stated policy
generally prohibits it, but if a policy is not enforced, it doesn't exist.
I stand 1000% behind what I said about allah and muhammed. Allah is
the moon god of the tribe of muhammed;
The writer claims that anyone who researches the matter will conclude
this. I did research it. There is no reliable confirmation of this
statement, and I previously pointed to a stable Wikipedia article on
this very claim. The claim is extremist fringe, and apparently based
on some "evangelical" intention.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allah_as_Moon-god
There is no independent scholarship that claims this about "Allah,"
and the statement is highly misleading, as "Allah" is a personal
name, equivalent to our "God," probably derived from "Al-ilah," which
simply means "the god," which is a term which could be used for *any*
god where the reference is definite. So someone, somewhere, may have
called any one of the pre-Islamic gods, "the god." Like, a Moon
worshipper might say, "Look at the god up in the sky, there." But
evidence for ALLH, as Allah is written, referring to some moon God, I
could not find. (Al-ilah would be written ALALAH.) The writer at one
point referred to "al-ilyah" as the supposed name of the Moon god, I
could find no academic reference to this, when I searched for it, I
found this author's post and some fictional usages. That last name
would be spelled differently again, ALALYH. ALALH could easily be
contracted to ALLH, and there is evidence for this, but ALALYH would
not, the Ya in it would not disappear so easily. It would become
ALLYH. Pronounced quite differently.
Jojo is far from knowledgeable on this topic, yet he writes with
"1000%" certainty. That's a sign of one of three conditions:
insanity, fanatic (1000%) faith in some other source, or trolling.
What Jojo has acknowledged, again and again, is being deliberately
offensive. He thinks of it as "retaliation." which is bizarre for
someone who claims to be Christian. Even the old law, lex talonis,
was *limited* to nothing more than the original offense, returned.
and muhammed did indeed have dozens of wives and concubines.
No support for "dozens" has been found, but it's a complex issue. The
writer's original claim was "dozens of wives."
The normal figures given by historians are twelve, i.e., his first
wife, Khadijah, who was his only wife until she died, then multiple
wives after than, a common cultural pattern for the Arabs; a young
man would marry an older woman, then when she died, many younger
women, if he could afford it. The sources list 11 later wives.
However, there are various hints or what amount to rumors -- isolated
traditions -- of other marriages, transient and in some cases
explicitly unconsummated. By tossing in these, one may create a
longer list, it seems that the extremity of this is 24. Very unlikely
that all of these stories are true, and some can't count legally as
marriages, i.e., an unconsummated marriage may be more of a
betrothal, an unfinished agreement.
And then "concubines" are tossed in. The word that would be used in
Arabic would simply mean a female servant. Servants are *not* wives.
The Qur'an requires marrying a servant before "going in" to her. What
people like this author have done is to simply assume that if he
could, he did. Honi soit qui mal y pense.
And he did indeed have a 9 year-old little girl that also served
as his concubine.
I'm not sure what he's talking about here. Did he have a 9-year-old
servant girl? And what if he did?
The writer, again, simply assumes that "servant girl" would be there
for sex, which is what "concubine" tends to connote in English. It's
complicated. Traditions about household servants, and Muhammad
apparently did have some, of both sexes, are fairly thin.
(Islamic "traditions" about the Prophet are of varying degrees of
reliability, a whole science developed attempting to categorize
traditions by reliability. The Qur'an itself is considered to be --
and reasonably was -- accurately preserved, being memorized by many
through the whole community, but traditions are just, on the order
of, "According to X, Y said the Prophet said," not written down until
maybe a century later. Some are "mutawaatir," i.e., heavily multiply
confirmed, i.e., there are apparently multiple lines of testimony.
Those are considered the most solid. Even though the marriages of the
Prophet would be common knowledge (secret marriage being considered a
contradiction), intimate details might not be. The marriage
information is thus weak, in general, these "extra wives" are not
mutawaatir traditions. Yes, Muhammad obviously had more than a couple
of wives, and the Qur'an makes mention of it. The Qur'an implies a
general limit of four, under the best circumstances, but does not
actually limit it to four. (I read it in the Arabic. Lots of
interpretive stuff, commonly stated as fact, is not based on what is
actually in the Qur'an, but on other materials used to interpret the
law, such as the judgments of scholars from twelve or thirteen
centuries ago....)
Heck, modern islamic countries today condone the marriage of even 3
year-old girls as long as sex is postponned until puberty.
That is, then, not marriage, but betrothal. Some cultures do that.
Our normal term is "engagement."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_marriage covers customs of child
marriage around the world. But betrothal is not marriage. Islamic law
is not particularly unusual in its requirements, except compared with
fairly recent increases of the age of marriage. Many cultures allow
marriage down to the biological transition, menarche. Menarche
generally means a physical ability to conceive children, the sign
being menstruation. That varies. Normal menarche around the world is
apparently something like 13. However, that would be a median figure,
actual menarche varies from individual to individual, and in tribal
cultures, especially non-literate ones, physical age is not
necessarily reliable. The actual condition of the girl is what would
be considered. If she's menstruating, she is, in these cultures,
marriageable, and, if she was betrothed, the marriage could be
consummated. So how young could that be?
Well, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precocious_puberty discusses
abnormally early puberty. "A common definition for medical purposes
is onset before 8 years in girls." I.e., this is not a sign of some
disease process unless the girl is less than 8 years old.
That means 10-12 years-old.
It could mean that. When I've seen this discussed by Muslims, it is
not an age, but a condition: menstruation. But then some will give a
minimum age. That is not a normal age, it's a minimum. There is a
case, I cite below, of a Yemeni girl who was betrothed -- or married,
sometimes the customs don't distinguish -- under conditions where it
was expected that the marriage would not be consummated till she was
"ready," which would mean puberty. She was 10 and was granted a
divorce because she was "raped." Presumaby by her husband. It was
illegal, what he did. There is now major political activity in the
Yemen, as a result of this case, to raise the "marriageable age" to
something specified in years, and one proposal that actually became
law was 17. That was lost in parliamentary moves, according to the
Wikipedia article, but it shows the nature of the issue. Nobody is
condoning sex with girls who are not sexually mature.
We have other plans for our children in modern society, we want them
to attend college, etc., so we normally want marriage to be postponed
until much later. But we have no right to impose this on all
societies across the planet, and to reach back and judge customs from
14 centuries ago, and apparently totally acceptable at the time, with
our modern prejudices.
So, in modern islamic countries, you can marry a 3 year-old
little girl and postpone sex until she is 10.
No. With the permission of her parents, you can betroth a girl of
*any* age. However, it's not necessarily encouraged, and laws vary on
this. I could betroth my daughters here, in the U.S., at *any age*.
But I could not permit them to *marry* without judicial permission,
and they are too young for that to be a real possibility.
It's also clear in Islamic law that the girl herself must consent,
and I've seen that intrepreted that she must consent to the marriage,
which comes later. (I.e., she can have the betrothal cancelled.) So
you can betroth a girl when she is very young, and you can marry her
-- with parental consent, and in many countries, including Islamic
ones, before a certain specific age it requires judicial permission
-- when she begins to menstruate. That might actually be younger than
10. As I recall, marriage during menstruation is actually illegal,
the period must stop, but an exception is made for abnormal bleeding.
The girl would presumably also be exhibiting the other signs of
puberty, a judge would presumably consider that.
United States law on this varies from state to state. Typically,
there is a minimum age, fairly high, for ordinary marriage -- the
parties can just do it -- but marriage at younger ages requires
judicial consent. There is no specific lower limit in some places.
According to Wikipedia, "Muslim marriages in the Philippines is based
on the Shari'a: 15 years for males and as for females, the onset of
puberty to age 15, whichever comes first." This is a common theme
found across many cultures: the minimum age for "marriage" is
puberty. The "onset" of puberty, however, is as much as a few years
earlier than menarche, but this may merely be confused reporting. The
tradition I always heard was menstruation as a standard.
By the way, one of the sources I read on this made the point that
sexual attraction to sexually mature females -- those at or beyond
advanced puberty, with developed breasts and menstruating, -- is not
"pedophilia." The author has used the marriage of the Prophet to
Ayesha, who may have been as young as six when betrothed, and some
sources say nine when the marriage was consummated -- others imply
later -- as evidence allowing the use of the term "pedophile" about
the Prophet, but there is zero sign of pedophilia. The man had twelve
marriages. *One* was a betrothal quite young, her father was very
pleased (and he actually became the first effective successor to the
Prophet), with consummation earlier than we might expect, but within
what happens with reasonable frequency, say at nine. (8 is not
seriously uncommon.) There is nothing here that looks like some
abnormal attraction to pre-pubescent females.
Further, none of this was hidden, none was considered shameful at the
time, and this claim of "pedophilia" is very, very modern. The claim
is scurrilous, intended to insult and enrage.
That my friend is also true. Many people find it offensive and
insulting and many muslims are quite embarrassed by it but it is a
true part of their heritage. I believe, islam is the only religion
that has this practice. Somebody may correct me on this.
Great. Stand corrected. Modern standards have advanced the age, but
marriages at what we now consider very young were permitted by other religions.
Because Islamic law paid special attention to marriage customs, and
because of a strong belief by many that what Islam does not forbid
should be allowed (that's questionable, but that's another issue, I'm
talking about political forces), it may be true that Muslim
communities today still allow puberty as the dividing line, whereas
most other religious communities have allowed the age to advance, and
have come to highly disapprove of what was common -- in their own
traditions -- long ago.
Quoting from the Wikipedia article on "Marriageable age,"
Traditionally, across the world, the age of consent for a sexual
union was a matter for the family to decide, or a tribal custom. In
most cases, this coincided with signs of puberty,
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menstruation>menstruation for a woman
and pubic hair for a
man.<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marriageable_age#cite_note-Encyclopedia_of_Children_and_Childhood_in_History_and_Society.2C_A-Ar.2C_Age_of_Consent-1>[1]
In Ancient Rome, it was very common for girls to marry and have
children shortly after the onset of puberty.
In the 12th century
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gratian_%28jurist%29>Gratian, the
influential founder of <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canon_law>Canon
law in <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval>medieval Europe,
accepted age of puberty for marriage to be between 12 and 14 but
acknowledged consent to be meaningful if the children were older
than 7. There were authorities that said that consent could take
place earlier. Marriage would then be valid as long as neither of
the two parties annulled the marital agreement before reaching
puberty, or if they had already consummated the marriage. It should
be noted that Judges honored marriages based on mutual consent at
ages younger than 7, in spite of what Gratian had said; there are
recorded marriages of 2 and 3 year
olds.<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marriageable_age#cite_note-Encyclopedia_of_Children_and_Childhood_in_History_and_Society.2C_A-Ar.2C_Age_of_Consent-1>[1]
The American colonies followed the English tradition, and the law
was more of a guide. For example, Mary Hathaway (Virginia, 1689) was
only 9 when she was married to William Williams. Sir Edward Coke
(England, 17th century) made it clear that "the marriage of girls
under 12 was normal, and the age at which a girl who was a wife was
eligible for a dower from her husband's estate was 9 even though her
husband be only four years
old."<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marriageable_age#cite_note-Encyclopedia_of_Children_and_Childhood_in_History_and_Society.2C_A-Ar.2C_Age_of_Consent-1>[1]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_marriages gives quite a bit of
information on child marriage practices around the world. The trend
is to increase the age at which marriage is permitted, and that's
happening in Muslim countries as well. There is a publicized case of
a Yemeni girl:
In 1999 the minimum marriage age of fifteen for women was abolished;
the onset of puberty, interpreted by conservatives to be at the age
of nine, was set as a requirement for consummation of marriage.[21]
In practice "Yemeni law allows girls of any age to wed, but it
forbids sex with them until the indefinite time they're 'suitable
for sexual intercourse.'"[20]
That would be puberty, possibly menarche.
In April 2008 Nujood Ali, a 10-year-old girl, successfully obtained
a divorce after being raped under these conditions. Her case
prompted calls to raise the legal age for marriage to 18.[22] Later
in 2008, the Supreme Council for Motherhood and Childhood proposed
to define the minimum age for marriage at 18 years. The law was
passed in April 2009, with the age voted for as 17. But the law was
dropped the following day following maneuvers by opposing
parliamentarians. Negotiations to pass the legislation continue.
What I predict for the Muslim world is legislation that raises the
presumptive age of marriage, but that still allows marriage before
that with judicial approval. In some places, below a certain minimum
age, a specific ministry approval is needed, that might be because
judicial approval could mean any Qadi, or religious judge, and some
of these are not properly protective of women's rights.
Here, there is a balance betwen the rights of very young women to
marry, presumably when appropriate -- i.e., they are sexually mature
-- and the prerogative of society to protect children from abuse.
Parental consent, by the way, is *always* required for the marriage
of legal minors. Judicial consent may be required *in addition to*
parental consent, and I think laws in some places (in the U.S.?)
allow a minor girl to request judicial permission to marry in spite
of lack of parental consent.
But, you don't have to believe me. Research it for yourself.
That's a common claim from this writer. He presents stuff with *no*
evidence, claims it's so obvious that anyone who believes otherwise
is stupid or lying, and, when he's asked for sources, he says
"research it yourself." And when we do, and present results, he
claims we are lying. But he doesn't show evidence. I can't think of
him *ever* doing it. So if I go ahead and do the research anyway, he
can always claim that I'm incompetent, since I didn't find his
definitive sources. But it appears that they don't exist.
I went round and round about this with him on the Obama birth
certificate issue. I even found some very convincing evidence for
forgery, at first sight. Then I looked deeper. It was an appearance,
not a reality, and that actually was obvious once the idea occured.
Like, head-slapping "why didn't I think of that!" But it sure looked
good for a ccuple of hours. Damn! I thought, there really is a
problem here! But there wasn't, and the whole birther thing has been
killed, dead, the major proponents essentially shut up and apparently
wish the history would disappear, or they blame Obama for not
standing on his head a year before. But he eventually did what they
demanded -- which was way beyond legal necessity, for any reasonable
standard of proof of U.S. citizenship by right of birth.
But he'll go on and on about "truth" and how he's being persecuted
for "telling the truth." Persecuted by whom?
PS, Note that I have not insulted you in any way. If you think that
I am insulting because I am speaking the truth; then tell me how I
can say these truths without being insulting. There is just no
way. The truth is offensive to muslims; but it is the truth.
The last sentence is truly offensive. It's blatant religious
prejudice. There are statements that this writer makes that are
somewhat true, and what is true isn't offensive. But the truth *can*
be offensive. That is, I think some Christian theology is baloney.
But I'm not going to say what I know -- or think I know -- about that
here. Please don't ask me! Because this is not a place for that kind
of "information." It would be needlessly offensive. And I don't
actually think "theology" is very important.
The problem here is not "truth." What is offensive here is not
"speaking the truth." Most of the time, this troll is not speaking
the truth at all, he's, at best, recklessly incautious, and claims as
indisputable fact what has little or no support, but *even if it were
true*, it would have no place here. It would be *gratuitously
offensive*. It's disruptive. Nobody was making claims about Allah, or
about the righteousness of the Prophet, or anything where it would be
reasonable for the writer to imagine that he needed to make "corrections."
No, the material about Islam, as far as I can tell, was introduced
merely because I'm Muslim, and I had confronted this writer about his
nonsense about Obama's birth certificate. It was *then* that he came
up with the Moon god stuff, and other comments about Muslims being
liars. I had not insulted his religion -- if I did, someone point it
out and I'll apologize.
Actually, this writer *cannot stand* the truth, i.e., the truth that
actually makes a difference, how he is living his life, as
exemplified by what he's been doing here.
"Moon god" makes no difference to anyone, except he thinks that it
would infuriate some. What's his reason for bringing it up? The idea
was promoted by evangelists hoping to convince Muslims that they are
worshipping a false god. Yeah, if we were worshipping the Moon, that
would be a problem. But we aren't. Even if the Moon were once called
Allah -- for which there is no evidence -- it wouldn't matter. We are
worshipping God, period, the One, the Reality, and the names are a
detail. We don't look at the Moon and say, now, there's God. Quite
simply, *we* are not worshipping a Moon god, whether or not the name
we commonly use for God may have been used for something else before.
So that particular evangelist claim is *stupid*. It would only
convince an idiot.
Yeah, there are other kinds of idiots who will kill people who
"insult" their religion. It's not just "Muslims" who do that. This
writer seems to imagine that I would "go to my imam" and "ask for a
fatwa against him." "Fatwa" means a religious judgment, and the term
came to be associated with a famous fatwa by the Imam Khomeini
against Salman Rushdie. I've written extensively about that fatwa.
The best that I can say about it is that Khomeini must have become
senile. It was *stupid*. It was internally contradictory, and it
judged fact about Rushdie that simply didn't match what Rushdie had
actually written. His book was not "against Islam." And, yes, some
people died as a result, because the fatwa targeted publishers as
well as Rushdie, so two publisher's agents died.
I don't have an "imam" to go to, except for friends who are Islamic
scholars, and none of these would even dream of getting involved with
something so stupid as the ravings on this list, and I wouldn't dream
of pointing them to this. Why should I waste their time?
(Khomeini was Shi'a, and the Shi'a almost worship their scholars, and
that's what Khomeini had been, a very famous one. But he was getting
quite old at the time, and I suspect he'd been fed very inaccurate
information about the book, and God knows what else. Legally, that
fatwa *sucked*. The fatwa was "against Islam.")
None of this is typical of Islam.
The world of Islam, however, is afflicted by "fundamentalists" just
as is the world of Christianity, and they make a lot of news. Islamic
scholars, the world's foremost, from Egypt, told the Taliban in
Afghanistan to leave that famous statue of the Buddha alone, but the
Taliban blew it up. Imagining that this was some kind of religious
requirement. (It was actually prohibited, for the knowledgeable.)
That's the influence of the Saudis, the Kingdom was founded in a
bloody persecution of any Muslims who disagreed with their very
extreme beliefs. Thinking of the fundamentalists as typical of Islam
is like thinking of the Spanish Inquisition as typical of Christianity.
----- Original Message ----- From: "de Bivort Lawrence" <[email protected]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Thursday, December 20, 2012 10:55 PM
Subject: Re: [Vo]:How bad is this news? Jed Rothwell -> about [this
writer] trolling
Without addressing anything else in this s message, I'll merely
stay that all reference to Islam and Muhammad is no sensual and
reflects a degree of ignorance that exceeds expectations.
Lawrence meant "nonsense" and by "exceeds expectations" he meant
"went beyond the boundaries of expected behavior," and he was
responding to a post of the writer whose claims in response were
discussed above.
