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Comment by bodas | Hacker News Reader

> misogynistic divorce laws, violence against “immodest” women, and application of the death penalty for homosexuality or apostasy

It is a caricature. You have been reading the internet too much and spent too little time talking to actual Muslim people. However, if you find out that one of your employees is a member of the taliban, feel free to fire him.

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There are 13 Muslim-majority countries where apostasy is punishable by death, including Malaysia, Iran, Nigeria, the UAE, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia. Pakistan only imposes the death sentence for blasphemy.

The UK has many sharia courts which act as marriage and divorce authorities, where women often have far fewer rights than men. (This sounds hysterical and far-right-ish, but it’s true)

I’ve heard horror stories of ex-Muslims in the US who were kidnapped and physically abused by their family when they tried to leave Islam.

Between mass-rape attacks in Germany, the many, many grooming gangs in the UK, and the latest sexual assault statistics from Sweden, I think it’s fair to take a skeptical eye towards mainstream Islamic male culture. Moderate and reformist Muslims in the West, for context, comprise a small majority of the faithful.

The Christian and Jewish faiths have reformed and lightened up with the liberalization of Western society. I think it’s fair to expect and allow adherents to the Islamic faith to walk a similar path.

EDIT: And for the record, I get along great with my Muslim co-workers. Please stop moving goalposts; to reiterate, your premise was that criticism of Islam's human rights record is driven by deep-rooted white supremacy.

> The UK has many sharia courts which act as marriage and divorce authorities, where women often have far fewer rights than men. (This sounds hysterical and far-right-ish, but it’s true)

Point out one of these Sharia courts on Google maps please.

Five seconds in Google Maps:

Islamic Sharia Council 34 Francis Rd, London E10 6PW, UK +44 20 8558 0581 https://goo.gl/maps/uVXqgkMMTYx

http://www.islamic-sharia.org/

The Islamic Sharia Council is a community centre for Muslims in the local area, offering various services.

It has nothing to do with implementing Sharia law in an extra-judicial court.

Please stop with the fear-mongering.

You are clearly arguing in bad faith, as the "various services" on that website clearly include divorce as adjudicated by Sharia law.

If you don't believe me, take it from Trevor Phillips, the former UK minister who coined the term "Islamophobia."

https://www.newsweek.com/muslims-are-creating-nations-within...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQcSvBsU-FM

Also, new WSJ piece out today with a travelogue through a Islamicized UK town, including Sharia courts and ubiquitous face veiling:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-visit-to-islamic-england-1535...

There is nothing in that article about Sharia courts. Just a sentence about some Muslim guy handing out books and talking about Sharia law.

There are no laws against that, or wearing religious clothing.

I'm done talking with someone who out-and-out lies.

"I later saw the Islamic Shari’a Council of Leyton. This community has religious, educational, business and legal institutions to maintain a separate identity."

1/4 of your fellow humans are Muslim, 1.8 billion people. You are going to need at least a few hundred million more examples.

Sure. Pew Research, a widely-respected nonpartisan fact tank, has conducted several studies in this area. They found that roughly 70% of Muslims worldwide support Sharia as the law of the land, coming out to just over 1.2 billion people.

I don't have to tell you that for women, gay people, and ex-Muslims, this isn't great news. Sometimes facts like these can be uncomfortable, but if we ignore them, things don't improve and real people suffer.

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/08/09/muslims-and-...

How was the human rights record in Malaysia before Islam? How do the countries you listed compare in terms of women’s rights with their non-Islamic neighbors? Pakistan is a rough part of town for women, but isn’t India dealing with their own women’s rights issues around rape, and honor killing? How much of what you’ve described is a religious issue, versus cultural or socioeconomic?

Disclaimer: I’m not Muslim, or from the regions described.

That's a great question. I would hope that if it ever came up in a work context, one hypothesis would not automatically be assumed without an open and honest and conversation.

It’s also probably the kind of thing you need to know a lot about before you start accusing a religion which represents a sizable fraction of the world, and which has many existing sects and interpretations, of being a causative agent in so many ills. An open and honest discussion is fine, but when one person has a strong position staked out without having done the requisite “homework” it’s not unrealistic that people will draw conclusions about their motives. Someone who has wondered about the relationship between Islam and women’s rights, modesty and so forth, and then taken the time to learn about where Islam vs. local pre-Islamic traditions stand on the issue might draw conclusions as well. Others, who note the intolerance for gay rights throughout much of Africa, in Islamic, Christian, and other religious frameworks might start to suspect that Islam wasn’t the active ingredient. Someone who noted the appalling history of women’s rights in much of Asia regardless of religious context might do the same.

Such a person would almost certainly be wary of engaging in debate, however open and honest, with someone who came to their strong conclusions in the face of such easily available evidence to the contrary. You also have to remember that some people use the framework of an open and honest discussion to proselytize, or rant. The archetypical bigot who “wants a fair debate about immigration” while really just wanting to express their bigotry without getting heat for it is one example. The antisemite who talks in terms of “bankers” and “globalists” is another. It’s unfair, but we all have to share a world with them, and so even when we really want to have an open and honest conversation we have to go that extra mile to prove it in cases like these. Otherwise people who don’t act in good faith can effectively mount a DOS on our time and attention through our goodwill.

Edit: Downvotes in lieu of something to say is something I’m becoming depressingly familiar with here. I can see why some people revert to low-effort posting when it’s going to be met with zero-effort. Oh well, I’m not sure what I expected.

I know a fair bit about Islam, but I'm always ready with an open mind to hear out different points of view, which is the ultimate topic of this submission. I'm also not even able to downvote, so take that as you will.

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