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There is the Islamic Palestinian majority and the Christian Palestinian minority. Christian Palestinians want to create a modern society imbued with full human rights for all. It is the Islamists who favor morality police and clitoral castration and murder of gays and Jewish genocide. Please do not view Palestinians as being a monolith.
by Amira ibn Nidal on Thu Oct 11, 2007 at 06:27:27 PM PDT
Amira,
This is an aspect of Palestinian politics and society that I've been watching with interest for many years.
How do different Palestinians look at the the traditional Turkish/Ottoman policy of community autonomy/subordination of the individual to a community? Do you know if under the PA, that different "religious authorities" continue to operate under the sanction of the state?
You're probably well aware at the problems the Israelis have had with this. It does protect the rights of religious minorities to a degree -- as it did for Christians and Jews under the Ottomans -- but I'm curious if the Palestinians continued with the "status quo" in a similar manner.
"If another country builds a better car, we buy it. If they make a better wine, we drink it. If they have better healthcare . . . what's our problem? "
by mbayrob on Thu Oct 11, 2007 at 06:42:26 PM PDT
[ Parent ]
We are basically Southern Negroes in 1940. We are barely tolerated and if we get uppity then we are lynched. My cousin in Tel Aviv has more religious and social freedom than my mother in Nablus, which is why I do not engage in Zionist bashing.
by Amira ibn Nidal on Thu Oct 11, 2007 at 06:49:53 PM PDT
I will admit up front that I've been hoping that Fatah will succeed in establishing a working and free Palestinian state. But the rise of political Islam will be a serious challenge from what you're saying.
Hopefully things will soon become easier and more comfortable for your family in Nablus. Being a "dhimmi" 300 years ago under the Ottomans was certainly better than being a Jew in Europe back then, but that isn't saying much.
by mbayrob on Thu Oct 11, 2007 at 07:04:14 PM PDT
I don't hold Israelis responsible for AIPAC. I don't hold myself responsible for the views of George Bush.. I certainly don't think this is a comment on all the palestinians who I think have a very legit reason to complain about their situation. What i do think this is, is very very wrong.
However, while you say Christian Palestinians want to create a modern society imbued with full human rights for all, I can assure you that there are Christian Americans who want to create a modern society where there is no such thing as human rights for all.
by onemadson on Thu Oct 11, 2007 at 06:52:14 PM PDT
If you lack religious freedom perhaps you want more, and if you have religious freedom perhaps you want less?
J.S. McCain III: "Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for in our grim, dark future there is only war."
by Shaviv on Thu Oct 11, 2007 at 07:23:51 PM PDT
really wish people would follow the golden rules that all of their religions make pretty clear because then we all would be peaceful and kind people.
Sadly it has never happened and I'm pretty certain it never will.
by onemadson on Thu Oct 11, 2007 at 07:28:20 PM PDT
...where Fatah or Hamas state they favor genital mutilation?
While genital mutilation does occur in the Muslim world - and large percentages of women in Egypt, Kurdish Iraq, Yemen, Oman and Somalia have been victimized by it - it is a pre-Islamic custom, and, just a year ago in Cairo, a conference of Islamic scholars denounced the practice as unIslamic. The conference was attended by Egypt's two top Islamic clerics, the Grand Sheik of Al-Azhar, Mohammed Sayed Tantawi, the foremost theological institute in the Sunni Muslim world, and Grand Mufti Ali Gomaa. Tantawi's and Gomaa's edicts are considered binding.
I am an anti-imperialist. I am opposed to having the eagle put its talons on any other land. -- Mark Twain
by Meteor Blades on Thu Oct 11, 2007 at 08:28:57 PM PDT
A'immah may well expound what the Quran teaches, and what Islamic law is, but like rabbis in Judaism, what gets taught and what gets practiced are two different things. Kapparah -- that thing where religious Jews take a chicken and turn it around their head as a way of putting off their sins (look it up, and read it and weep) is as good an example as any. The rabbis have been trying to stamp that one out for centuries, for all the good it's doing them. The rabbis call it an ignorant superstition, and the guys with the funny fur hats still buy the chickens and give 'em a spin every year. Go figure.
Folk customs have a life of their own. I was unaware that this custom is still practiced by Palestinian Moslems, but if it is, I doubt the people who do it are paying much attention to what scholars in Cairo are saying about it.
by mbayrob on Fri Oct 12, 2007 at 01:29:27 AM PDT
wide narrow
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