Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: KLP who wrote (40173)	8/27/2002 8:26:01 AM
From: Ilaine	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Hi Karen - re: "culture." There are so many different definitions of culture that it's impossible to define. We can talk about it but we can't pin it down. Last semester I took a graduate level cultural history class from Lawrence Levine at GMU - American cultural history - we spent the entire first three hour class trying to define culture - somebody drew a diagram with lots of circles and arrows on it - looked about right to me. It reminded me of my course in cultural anthropology - we spent more than one class trying to define culture, but wound up with a different set of definitions than we did in cultural history. Some definitions are better than others. We know that culture is something we are not born knowing, we learn it, and we learn it from the people we are around all the time. My recollection of what got us off on this tangent was Mark Steyn's column about Muslim gang rapes. Here in Northern Virginia, we have a lot of Muslims, but I have never heard of Muslim gang rapes, and I spend a fair amount of time in the courthouse. So my guess is that gang rapes have little to do with Islam, per se. The Koran actually forbids it. Rape is a capital offense under Islam - Mohammed said rapists should be stoned to death. As for requiring four witnesses for rape in Islam, that's actually incorrect. Four witnesses are required to prove adultery. Adultery and rape are different. I believe that the laws of some Islamic countries don't make that distinction, but they should. As for poring over the Koran, trying to understand Islam that way, I think it's fraught with peril, like trying to understand Christianity by reading the Bible. Here's what the Bible says about adultery, fornication and rape: >>13 If a man takes a wife and, after lying with her, dislikes her 14 and slanders her and gives her a bad name, saying, "I married this woman, but when I approached her, I did not find proof of her virginity," 15 then the girl's father and mother shall bring proof that she was a virgin to the town elders at the gate. 16 The girl's father will say to the elders, "I gave my daughter in marriage to this man, but he dislikes her. 17 Now he has slandered her and said, 'I did not find your daughter to be a virgin.' But here is the proof of my daughter's virginity." Then her parents shall display the cloth before the elders of the town, 18 and the elders shall take the man and punish him. 19 They shall fine him a hundred shekels of silver [2] and give them to the girl's father, because this man has given an Israelite virgin a bad name. She shall continue to be his wife; he must not divorce her as long as he lives. 20 If, however, the charge is true and no proof of the girl's virginity can be found, 21 she shall be brought to the door of her father's house and there the men of her town shall stone her to death. She has done a disgraceful thing in Israel by being promiscuous while still in her father's house. You must purge the evil from among you. 22 If a man is found sleeping with another man's wife, both the man who slept with her and the woman must die. You must purge the evil from Israel. 23 If a man happens to meet in a town a virgin pledged to be married and he sleeps with her, 24 you shall take both of them to the gate of that town and stone them to death-the girl because she was in a town and did not scream for help, and the man because he violated another man's wife. You must purge the evil from among you. 25 But if out in the country a man happens to meet a girl pledged to be married and rapes her, only the man who has done this shall die. 26 Do nothing to the girl; she has committed no sin deserving death. This case is like that of someone who attacks and murders his neighbor, 27 for the man found the girl out in the country, and though the betrothed girl screamed, there was no one to rescue her. 28 If a man happens to meet a virgin who is not pledged to be married and rapes her and they are discovered, 29 he shall pay the girl's father fifty shekels of silver. [3] He must marry the girl, for he has violated her. He can never divorce her as long as he lives.<< bible.gospelcom.net I am aware that women are not well treated in most (maybe all?) Muslim countries, but maltreatment of women is certainly not limited to those countries. Women did not get the vote in the US until 1920. The first women to become a lawyer in Virginia died last year. Somewhere I have a copy of an old case that held that women could not become lawyers because it was too tough of a job for a woman. I don't think the struggle for equality is over in this country, either, but it's much better than it was when I was a girl.

To: KLP who wrote (40173)	8/27/2002 11:56:48 AM
From: JohnM	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Thanks for the links, KLP. Those aren't bad at all. Raymond Williams and Clifford Geertz are very respectable figures so they should be carefully read. That website comes from wsu.edu. I don't recognize the university acronym, perhaps it's Washington State University. The authors of the first page linked are: Eric Miraglia, Dept. of English/Student Advising and Learning Center Dr. Richard Law, Director, General Education Peg Collins, Information Technology, Learning Systems Group Probably Richard Law is the person most responsible, though it's not certain. As far as using the web for these purposes, might I counsel caution. Once you get a hit, check the sources carefully. See if there is any way you can verify their credibility, credentials, something. There is a lot, as I'm certain you already know, of very weird stuff out there that passes for authority.