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Comment by erikb | Hacker News Reader

"Afghan soldiers told to ignore American Allies' eating pork"

Well, reading this you might think "how can that compare to raping boys? Boys are human beings and human beings have rights, just like you and me? But at the same time a Muslim may consider refusing to eat pork a law by god which is way higher than anything considering humans.

The point I try to make is this: In an intercultural environment you need to accept the other one doing things you consider immoral. Otherwise there will be no cooperation at all. You must not judge. We all know that and when we talk about it we think about clothes, how to say hello, and kinds of food. But if you really want to achieve important cooperation you also need to consider points like this. That's the tough part, accepting these things that are really undiscussable in your culture. In an intercultural environment they should be.

Now please, don't just downvote. Write a comment. Thanks.

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I downvoted because that's a bad analogy. Here's why:

Animal rights aside (because that has nothing to do with the restriction of pork), only the person eating pork is harmed. When Americans consume pork, it doesn't harm the Afghans who don't consume pork. Meaning, everyone eating pork is freely volunteering to do so. No one involved in eating of pork is involved against their will. Whatever the punishment might be in the afterlife, it only involves those who consume pork. In a sense, it's a victimless crime. Again, putting animal rights aside.

However, having sex with young boys involves the unwilling young boy. There is a victim that needs protection here.

How can you say this when you very well know, eating pork means killing innocent animals, keeping them locked down, in the same way these people are holding small children locked down and abusing them.

Eating pork is as much abuse as is abusing little children, or even more, as the animal is brutally killed, a thinking, living being. You cannot just put animal rights aside like that, this is probably along the lines people who abuse children are thinking, that it is their right to abuse children, like the western world thinks "It is our right to kill, slaughter and eat animals".

Maybe if we wouldn't think that we can just raise, kill and eat other living, conscious, thinking, feeling beings, just like we are, all the time, then we would have less abuse of ourselves too?

Compassion goes a long way. If we cannot have compassion to other living beings inhabiting this planet, how can we have compassion to other people inhabiting this planet. Can you see the analogy ?

And if you're making the comparison to intelligence as being the factor that limits what we should eat and kill, then I can remind that it has been studied that pigs are as intelligent or even more intelligent than dogs even. Now, what do you think such intelligent beings are thinking when they are being held captive and tortured in their poor living conditions, just to be force fed, force breeded and then violently killed just to fill our bellies ?

Islam doesn't ban eating pork to protect the life of these innocent creatures.

But saving animals is another, third, moral point of view in which eating another living, breathing being is just as bad or worse than raping one. Just as with Islam you can say "no, my moral codex is more important" or you can try to accept it.

This is literally the stupidest thing I've read on HN in a very long time. Bravo intrepid commenter for declaring the consumption of meat to be worse than the sexual abuse of small children.

You've done a disservice to vegans and vegetarians, everywhere.

Don't be rude.

He's not rude, at a guess that's quite restrained (compared to what my version of that comment would be anyway).

From the guidelines

> When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. E.g. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

That's not what I did. You read it incorrectly. But I have to say I aimed to achieve that misinterpretation. Now either you just ignore everything and think all the world is a simple happy place, or you get a step closer to that "aha" effect, realising there are people that really have that point of view and that it is as valid as yours. While for your personal life it might never matter, it certainly matters for cooperation on an international level.

That's your view. My view is that all life is equally important. Why is abusing a child worse than killing another living being ? Can you elaborate ?

I know and realize this is a stupid argument to have, especially on Hacker News, but if people are ready to make arguments about the subject that animals have no right, on a certain level we are ready to make the argument that maybe foreigners or "lower level people" as many tend to think don't have the same right to live. You see the connection I'm trying to make ?

Wait till the news about some group who fights for animal righst so much that they want to get rid of predators come to HN. Yes, it does exist.

Thanks for giving the reasoning for your downvote. But your argument is exactly the point of view that I already responded to in my initial comment. Not a single line shows that you try to accept that other people follow another moral codex. You say "No, because in my moral codex that's a really bad thing, therefore I can't be tolerant." and that is exactly what Muslims argue if we talk about eating pork, dressing of women, joking about religion, etc. And that's why it's actually a good analogy.

Or let me put it that way: The analogy is bad if you apply your moral codex. The analogy is good if you consider it a statement that is as bad as the headline in our moral codex, but from their point of view. This is the thinking step you should apply. And that's where the analogy comes from.

First of all this practice has nothing whatever to do with Islam> This has been pointed out to you several times already and your persistent linking of this practice with that religion is at this point a pretty obviously deliberate slur. Please stop. Secondly, considering whether a practice has unwilling victims is a perfectly reasonable objective measure to apply when evaluating a practice. As a matter of fact, the kinds of abuse we are discussing are illegal in Afghanistan and are widely considered illegal and immoral abuse in the Muslim world, so your argument lacks merit because it is based on several false premises.

'Has nothing to do with Islam' and the proven numerous cases of Catholic (among others) priests having sex with boys have nothing to do with Christianity either? I'm on the fence on that one though we can agree it's not ordained in either faith.

The injunctions for illegality and immorality you cite for the Muslim world apply equally to those for Christianity of course.

Reading https://info.publicintelligence.net/HTT-PashtunSexuality.pdf there seems to be a problem for men not being allowed to see the face of potential mates; is this custom associated with Islam or not? Catholic priests are not allowed to marry. What are they supposed to do with their sexual impulses. We know the unconvincing answer.

> ...there seems to be a problem for men not being allowed to see the face of potential mates; is this custom associated with Islam or not?

Well, that's a digression on to a different topic. There's no law in traditional Islamic jurisprudence that requires wearing a veil, only modest forms of dress, and in fact it was not a common practice in the earliest history of Islam. Veils for women were adopted in later Islamic ruling courts as a fashion copied from Byzantium, as Greek women had worn veils since ancient times. Of course if you ask people in Afghanistan why they wear veils they will invoke Islam, but historically that's not the whole story.

In case that's taken in a pejorative sense, as a Christian I have to accept that many of the practices in Christianity have accumulated through later history in the same way. That's just how tradition and culture work.

I don't link anything to anything. Stop pretending I do and we can live on happily.

Your analogy is utterly wrong and broken, because you are mistakenly calling raping young boys "cultural". It's not cultural, and it's not something that happens across all of Afghanistan, otherwise all Afghani males could be considered pedophiles. It's a select group of pedophiles that have attained military status such that they won't be prosecuted for their crimes. That's not culture, that's corruption.

It's the same thing with the Catholic Church. Widescale sexual abuse of young boys by priests occurred, but not because it's a cultural aspect of the Catholic Church. It's a disgusting corruption that somehow manifested itself by pedophiles that infiltrated the Church and abused their positions, just like in Afghanistan. So there's no lens of morality to view things with. What happened in both cases is that it's a crime that has grown due to widespread corruption. I'm sure you will find that a lot of money was stolen by the Afghani military as well, but theft is not cultural as well, that's corruption and abuse.

The same thing happened in the British government where a widespread sexual abuse ring was discovered recently. Is that also "cultural" aspect of British people? No, it's corruption and a heinous crime.

The assumption that only pedophiles rape very young children is wrong - there is a "phenomenon" of substituting preferrred sex partners with what is available.

That's why there is a rape problem in prisons which is certainly not caused by gays ...

Ok, let's talk about female genital mutilation. Will you claim that is not cultural? Or the "honor" killings? Something being a part of culture or tradition does not make it right or valuable.

>you are mistakenly calling raping young boys "cultural".

I'm not.

So were does cultural acceptance stop? If it were common not to rape boys but to eat babies after torturing them to tenderize the meat, should we also be accepting of that? There has to be a point where we draw the line. Most people here I think would agree that rape is on the other side of that line.

Just to be completely impartial, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was agreed to by Afghanistan and the US in 1948. http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/

Rape violates several of those rights.. while eating pork violates none of those rights.

So there is a line that was already drawn years ago.. and rape is clearly on the other side of it.

I love your first question.

How many lives can be saved right now and in the next X years just because you achieve this cooperation? How many things the other side has to accept from you that they consider really bad? Do you help the boys by not agreeing to cooperate and going home or do you help them more by accepting what happens and providing medical/psychological help afterwards? How many of them are even like that? Maybe most of them also disagree with raping boys but somehow can't enforce it? Can you even choose to not cooperate or will the people above you not allow it? It is very complex and should not be answered in general. Sometimes even every decision is bad. How many of them are even like that? Maybe most of them also disagree with raping boys but somehow can't enforce it?

I'm happy that you open up for that question, because that's really the point. When should we stop? Thanks!

I start with the principle, "your freedom ends where my face begins" following this acts that involve harming another human are unacceptable. I.e. rape, genital mutilation, forced marriage etc can never be cultural issues to me. In my opinion they are always wrong no exceptions.

I consider myself lucky to live in a country where the laws (mainly) reflect my own stance on many of these issues.

Culture is a distraction.

The actions in the articles against boys and girls fail the live-and-let-live principle on the most basic levels. The word 'uncivilised' gets thrown around a bit, and loses weight. Here we see it in the raw. These practices are uncivilised behaviour. They favour might-is-right over the freedom of the victims.

People should not be slaves. Humans should be able to live their lives to pursue their own interests.

>The key issue is individual rights vs might-is-right. Culture is a distraction.

Your very conception of "individual rights" (and what they should be) is cultural itself.

(Not to mention abused all the time to support hypocritical interests).

>No, the "individual rights" are declared by UN

The UN is just a bunch of big powers bullying and doing what they like to lesser countries. And those big powers don't even sign or ratify all decisions made by the UN, or selectively pick what they care for and ignore those that don't favor them. The US for example has refused to cooperate in a international war criminal court that asks to trial its own.

Or how about the fact that in the 60's, decades since the signing of those rights, blacks still have to fight against seggregation in schools, hotels, etc? And modern stuff like torture, drone killings, rampant police killings of innocents, death penalty (including for minors) and all that stuff against basic human rights?

Heck, when the declaration of UN was signed, most of the countries doing the signing were still colonies, and all of the major ones had colonies themselves. Hurray for hypocrisy -- and selective enforcing of them as an excuse and as a weapon against lesser countries.

>Culture is a distraction.

Culture is a lie. It must be re-told in order to perpetuate.

Abandon any culture that allows - or requires - one to hate and destroy the life of others.

Its as simple as that. Cultures are lies. Stop telling the lies; end the hate. Abandon any culture that allows you to hate.

While I think that the question what to do with the acceptance of cultures that don't accept our core values is valid. And will become more and more potent with the immigrant waves flooding Europe, you are being somewhat more inflammatory than necessary.

There are things we should not accept - end of story. Nonconsensual sex and cult brainwashing are some of them.

Correct me if I am wrong, but while your argument might have some legitimacy, in this particular case it sounds as if you believe that rape is actually something culturally acceptable in these parts of the world. It is not, and FYI, Islam forbids 1- homosexuality, 2- rape. This phenomena SHOULD be fought against -because it is wrong, and the child is being abused here- especially by the people who are there to spread 'democracy and progressiveness' in the first place ;)

Not that I disagree with you on the morals of this comment, but a lot of confusion would be avoided if everybody just accepted that the US is a normal empire; an empire with geopolitical interest in the region and every reason to keep happy the cadre of monsters they got themselves as alleys.

It is not that they hate the local population, but they don't gain anything by defending them and may loose a lot by playing the role of Knight in the Shinning Armour.

That's also a good point. Gaining access to trade routes and natural ressources might be more important than protecting innocents to the agenda givers.

Or preventing unfriendly third parties from gaining access to such resources. Both China and Russia are better positioned geographically to take advantage of those territories.

> Islam forbids 1- homosexuality, 2- rape.

Like all religions Islam says one thing and its contrary. consistency has never been a strength of religions. Some muslims say that only homosexual acts are forbidden , as for rape , I'll let you read the quran and the hadiths again.

Now the question is, what Islam considers to be homosexual act and what is rape. I've read, that being the penetrating side is not considered to be homsexual. As for the rape, you can guess.

Well I'd simply submit that, after spending time there, I'm tired of the mental gymnastics required for the culturally relativistic perspective espoused in your comment. So, you're simply wrong.

How about the mental gymnastics of "we invade them for their own good"?

If you don't care about humanity, and are going to ignore abuse. Why send soldiers there in the first place?

Culture is NOT an excuse!

Locally normal and immoral don't exclude each other. In my opinion immoral doesn't differ all that much depending on culture. The biggest factor in defining what things are immoral would depend on some believes: do animals have right, are you an extremist in your believe, are there any animals holy, ... Personally I think any sane person would decide what is moral purely by considering suffering

>If you don't care about humanity, and are going to ignore abuse. Why send soldiers there in the first place?

To secure control of the area, friendly allied governments and cheap oil.

Why they'd sent soldiers there, for "humanity"? They could send them to Emirates or Palestine if that was the issue (if we ignore the whole "not their business in the first place" thing).

I am entirely happy to judge paedophiles and rapists. I'll also judge thieves, racists and murderers.

This is quite an astounding comment!

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