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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group

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To: Ruffian who wrote (249965)	11/28/2007 11:24:23 PM
From: Nadine Carroll	Read Replies (3) of 281500

I have never claimed that Islam is the only religion that does this, and there are anomalies in British law – the archaic offence of blasphemy is an example – which reminds us of a time when Christians reacted just as violently to what they perceived as "insults". In the past, Catholics and Protestants took turns to slaughter each other as Sunni and Shia are doing now, but Christianity has to a large extent been secularised. Not as much as I'd like – there's still a way to go on homosexuality and abortion – but there is no doubt that the influence of Christian churches has dramatically declined. At the heart of this process is an alteration in the status of religious texts. The Old Testament is full of hair-raising injunctions and barbaric punishments but I don't know anyone, apart from a few extremists on the Christian right, who takes it seriously. The idea that a single book written centuries ago has unique authority – in effect, a veto over all other ideas – makes no sense in societies where intellectual curiosity is valued and encouraged. He clearly doesn't know any Orthodox Jews; they take the Old Testament very seriously indeed. Moreover, he does not understand that it's not just a matter of declining influence of religion that has allowed the West to modernize. Christianity and Judaism have always had a different conception of religion that has much more sway for individual rights and conscience and much less for claims of honor. You can particularly see this in the treatment of women, who are regarded all the way through the Old and New Testament as people in their own right, though with lesser legal status than men. In Sharia and Arab custom, women are vessels for men's honor. Thus Arab custom will kill a rape victim even when they know she was a victim; the family is dishonored by the broken vessel. You don't see this even in the law of Moses three thousand years ago, which makes a sharp distinction between rape and fornication.

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