Secular, moderate countries don’t sentence people to death for bogus “crimes” like blasphemy.
Many secular, moderate countries punish people for criticizing the state, or other things like denying the Holocaust or Armenian Genocide, for example. In Turkey it's illegal to insult "Turkishness", and in the USA, people like Tariq Ramadan have been banned from entering the country for being critical of Bush.
"NassirH: who do you think is espousing an essentialist point of view?"
Islamophobes and Muslim extremists both pretend that there is only one legitimate opinion on a variety of issues regarding Islamic law. For example, both may quote Ibn Taymiyya (who was influenced by the Mongol invasions) on Jihad but completely ignore the interpretations of Muslims scholars who contradict their preconceived notions.
Since there has always been a diversity of opinion when it came to Islamic jurisprudence, it’s wrong to view these issues through an essentialist point of view.
How is what Juan wrote bigoted? He was 100% correct in what he asserted.
Secular, moderate countries don’t sentence people to death for bogus “crimes” like blasphemy.
Many secular, moderate countries punish people for criticizing the state, or other things like denying the Holocaust or Armenian Genocide, for example. In Turkey it's illegal to insult "Turkishness", and in the USA, people like Tariq Ramadan have been banned from entering the country for being critical of Bush.
Does anyone know if any mainstream American newsource is covering this story? They were all over that [insert utterly retarded news story here].
"NassirH: who do you think is espousing an essentialist point of view?"
Islamophobes and Muslim extremists both pretend that there is only one legitimate opinion on a variety of issues regarding Islamic law. For example, both may quote Ibn Taymiyya (who was influenced by the Mongol invasions) on Jihad but completely ignore the interpretations of Muslims scholars who contradict their preconceived notions.
Since there has always been a diversity of opinion when it came to Islamic jurisprudence, it’s wrong to view these issues through an essentialist point of view.