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Politics : Should God be replaced? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: average joe who wrote (4721)	12/12/2000 4:35:02 PM
From: epicure	Respond to of 28931

Not true. Men want to marry women who have been circumcised. They believe that women who are not circumcised will be unfaithful. Since in those societies women are useless except as wives, the market determines how to prepare them to be wives. I am surprised you wouldn't see the market forces at work in that.

To: average joe who wrote (4721)	12/12/2000 5:35:48 PM
From: Dayuhan	Respond to of 28931

Those women are Taleban women living their culture within their own borders, as far as you know they are happy. I will leave it to E to dig out the citations, but I have read in several places that suicide and attempted suicide have soared among Afghan women. The women of Afghanistan have not always been oppressed to this extent, and the Muslim fanaticism of the Taleban is a relatively recent phenomenon. Under the evil government dominated by the Soviets, women had full access to education and health care; they wore no veils and had the same legal rights as men. Before that government took power, the dominant forces in Afghan culture were the leaders of the individual tribes; I am not saying that women had equal status with men, but they were nowhere nearly as bad off as they are now. you can't liberate the Taleban The Taleban achieved power with the aid of American governments who believed that anything was better than communism. This was not the case: the Taleban are now a greater threat to our security, openly providing shelter to leading terrorists, than communist Afghanistan ever was, and individual Afghans suffer a great deal more oppression now than they did then. If it was important for us to support Afghan freedom fighters then, why is it less important now?

To: average joe who wrote (4721)	12/12/2000 10:01:52 PM
From: E	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 28931

The Taliban are an extremist sect forcing its own standard not on those who agree with it, but on those who don't. Would you be happy if you had been a doctor or lawyer or university student leading a normal, happy life as a Muslim woman, and suddenly been, by a bunch of armed fundamentalist loonies, forbidden to work, attend school, leave your house without a male relative, or show any part of your body on pain of death or mutilation or beatings? If you had to paint your windows so no passing male might see you? Wear silent shoes so you couldn't be heard? What if you were a woman with a PhD without a male relative or husband to support you? Would you be "happy" starving or begging for food because you were not allowed to work? No, you would feel as the Muslim women feel. In record numbers they are being admitted to mental institutions and committing suicide. Husbands have the power of life and death over their women relatives, especially their wives, but an angry mob has just as much right to stone or beat a woman, often to death, for exposing an inch of flesh. In fact, for offending them in any way. Joe, this is not Muslim tradition. BTW, you obviously don't know anything about the social bases for FGM, but the information is easily available if you want to find it.

To: average joe who wrote (4721)	12/12/2000 10:31:01 PM
From: E	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 28931

<<<Focus on doing things where you can effect positive change. You will be satisfied by your effort and in a big way change the world for the better. >>> I just got back a little while ago from an Amnesty International action at Barnes & Noble. Every year at this time (Dec. 10 is Human Rights Day) my local AI group joins with other groups from all over the world to organize the sending of cards of support to a select group of prisoners from all over the world who have been imprisoned sometimes for decades for their beliefs, ethnicity, religion. None have had a fair trial, most have been brutally tortured, many are ill. It's true that the cells or cages these unfortunates are being tormented in are not in our back yard. But every year after this action, more than half of them are released, because even oppressive regimes are embarrassed at the attention of the world to their crimes. That changes the world for the better. My AI group has been responsible for getting more "Prisoners of Conscience" released than any other US group. A Korean prisoner whose case we and a group from the Netherlands worked on (publicized) was in New York last week after his release, and several members of my group went into the city at his request to meet him. He will come here to thank the group personally next year. I am "satisfied with [my] effort." I could hardly be more satisfied. I get to look into the face of an innocent man whose life I helped to save. I don't care if he's Korean. Or Chinese. Or Mexican. Or Guatemalan. Or Turkish. (You would weep to read the letters from a Turkish journalist I worked to get released. I have pictures of his wedding. I have a tablecloth sent to me in gratitude by his sister. On his son's second birthday, he phoned me, and although his English is poor, I understood what he was telling me with the call, and "Today my boy two year old." The arrangement we have is that the money I sent to him, when he was released, will be paid back by helping someone else, who will repay him by helping some other person.) Joe, you may believe that I am as satisfied by my ways of trying to make the world a better place as you are by yours. I think it is inappropriate of you to lecture others on how to "effect postive change." We are grownups here.