ailamos, you are doing Islam a great service when you insist that it needs to undergo a serious reformation. It is long overdue, sxb. Muslims sadly exhibit a mediaeval understanding of religion where intellectual enquiry and rational criticism are replaced with childish certitudes and platitudes.

There has to be an impermeable 'wall of seperation' between religion and state so as to guuarantee principles of equality, freedom, and justice in society. Religious sentiments are many and varied, even within the same religion, even within the same sub-sect. If the Somali state were to espouse Islam as its official religion, which reading or interpreation of Islam would it choose? There is no generic, universal understanding of Islam. If the government choose one view, it would be discriminating against the others. Laws should not be based on religious views. Instead, it should be based on universal, elementary civil codes; subject to rational analysis and ammendment. Though the majority of Somalis are muslims, there are many non-muslim Somalis; atheists, agnostics, christians, buddhists, hindus, confucians. The Somali state should not favor one segment of it's citizenry over the other. It should allow every group to practise its beliefs freely, promulgate its doctrines openly, thereby adding to the richness of the social fabric.

C&H, fair enough. I just wanted to preempt any troll-like behavior on your part, because this the second time where you made a half-witted remark in response to my post. Carry on with your discussion, walaalo. Dhagax, as a non-believer, I'm often dumbfounded when muslims tell me that the applicability of islamic law holds true in all times and climes; that it is as relevant in the 21st century as it was in the 7th century. But this cannot be the case since Islam still stipulates that many out-dated and oppressive institutions such as slavery are permissible in certain circumstances. It is a consensus amongst Historians that Mohammad never abolished slavery - he only regulated it. Allah speaks about many things in the Quran: from the evil of menses, to the horrors of Hell, to the killing of infidels. No mention, let alone abolition, is made of the most oppressive form of instituion in the history of humankind, slavery. Why is this?

C&H walaalo, adigu aflagaaddada iyo asluub-xumida maxaad ku jeclaatay. Dee xanaaq iyo waxaad sheegayso ma jiraan ee waxaan ku idhi doodda ha leexin ee su'aalaha meesha lagu soo daabacay ama ka jawaab ama isaga tag.

The Quran and Hadith are woefully anachronistic manuals for governance. By the way, whose interpretation of the lovely old book, the Quran, would take precedence, since it's all mired in opinion: sufis, wahhabis, shias, or ahmadis? Somalis need more seculairty and less religiosity. It's refreshing to see that there are many free-thinkers on SOL - a much needed presence in the face of self-righteous faith-heads.

VIRTUAL PARTICLES by Frank Wilczek Beware of thinking nothing's there. Remove all you can, despite your care Behind remains a restless seething Of mindless clones beyond conceiving. They come in a wink, they dance about, Whatever they touch is seized by doubt: What am I doing here? What should I weigh? Such thoughts often lead to rapid decay. Fear not! The terminology's misleading; Decay is virtual particle breeding Their ferment, though mindless, does serve noble ends: Those clones, when exchanged, make a bond between friends. To be or not? The choice seems clear enough, But Hamlet vacillated. So does this stuff.

Cosmic Gall by John Updike NEUTRINOS, they are very small. They have no charge and have no mass And do not interact at all. The earth is just a silly ball To them, through which they simply pass, Like dustmaids down a drafty hall Or photons through a sheet of glass. They snub the most exquisite gas, Ignore the most substantial wall, Cold shoulder steel and sounding brass, Insult the stallion in his stall, And scorning barriers of class, Infiltrate you and me! Like tall and painless guillotines, they fall Down through our heads into the grass. At night, they enter at Nepal and pierce the lover and his lass From underneath the bed-you call It wonderful; I call it crass.

The secular state has a vested interest not only in promoting and protecting secular ideas and values, but in inhibiting regressive religious ones. As much as I would like to impose my aesthetic predilections on my fellow humans, it is not my prerogative, nor should it be. But the problem with the Burka is not one of mere taste, rather it is one of legality and morality. One has to understand the cultural milieu from which the Burka, and other oppressive customs, arose. Islam, like all androcentric religions, has not exactly been a stalwart champion of womens rights. The lovely old book - as Khayyam would cheekily call it - is stuffed with all manner of misogyny and sexism. Where else does violence against women find divine sanction except in the lovely old book? Though in the spirit of fairness, I must admit that muslim scholars have spilled much ink over the nuances and nicieties of beating women. The lack of egalitarianism in arabic, and by extension islamic, social structures is normative. In Shariah law, a woman's rights are almost always less than that of a man; in testimony, two women are required in the place of one man; in inheritance, a woman gets half the inheritance of a man; in weregild, the blood money of a woman is half that of a man. The same inequalities plague marital customs as a muslim man is allowed to marry a non-muslim woman (Jewish or Christian), but a muslim woman cannot marry a non-muslim man. A man is allowed to marry upto four wives ; a woman does not have such rights. What has all this got to do with the ghastly Burka costume? There has always been a rich and thiriving islamic tradition wherein theocrats and mullahs strip away a woman's rights. The Burka-wearing muslim woman in th West has been hoodwinked by the religious rhetoric of such faith-heads. And I think that the secular state should use the sticks-and-carrots approach in assimilating and civilising such persons. Education and empowerment are important, but if that does not work, then the Burka must be banned from the public arena, as it nothing but a shameful political symbol of extremism.

Originally posted by chocolate & honey: To CIC, OH My you really went all out with correct grammar, spelling and even used such warm and fuzzy words like “Truism,” Liberal Democracies(wow! Liberal AND Democracy? My head is swimming!), “freedom,” and “faith-heads”(Ok. Wow! I mean this kind of English… surely, you’ve done your Liberal English teacher proud). At the core of this debate is this trifling thing called ehem… freedom of choice(I know, I know you only understand it when the Western Media uses it but bear with me ok?). A Muslim woman in Europe or America doesn’t have to wear the Hijab but they choose to. See, it as simple as that. Oh poor “illiterate Muslim women,” forever chained to their "backwarded" principles! I mean they cant even fathom what “Freedom” and “personal choice” mean. I mean how dare they choose Hijab after all the West has given them, right? :mad: I cant help but laugh at “desert dogma.” And whereas God is concerned, I’ll leave you with this: There is nothing more dangerous than a fool armed with limited knowledge. You don’t have the foggiest idea of what you’re talking about. Warning: too much television kills brain cells. [/quote Putting aside your puerile obsession with proper english, I cannot help but retort in the manner of an American wordsmith; asked what he thought of the increasing publication of piffle, he quipped: "these books are a great deal harder to read than they were to write". The same thing can be said about the posts that you have made on this thread - thoughtless claptrap. I have no qualms, for the most part, with someone's sartorial preferences however ghastly and clumsy the costume (e.g. Burka, Jalbab, Niqab). What gets my teeth gnashing and my skin crawling are the perverse ideaologies behind such ackward costumes. The wholly unwarranted - dare I say risible - claim that God wants a female to dress this way. If some half-literate bimbo, presiding in the West, wants to wear a Burka, or defend its misogynistic underpinnings, then she should not be afforded the 'luxury' of wearing it. There are many cogent arguments to be made in this regard - both legal and ethical. Faith-heads often mistake the principle of freedom, of choice, of conscience, of religion, as a license to practise barbarities and attrocities. You are free to sing obscure hymns, bow and dance, prostrate and jump, and peform all varieties of strange ritual and prayer. But you cannot use religion as a trump card for wearing Burka, killing apostates, lapidating people to death, engaging in jihadism, and the like.

A muslim woman in Greece or Germany does not have to wear this hideous form of hijab. That's a truism. Liberal democracies have at their core the principle of freedom of conscience and religion. What befuddles me is why faith-heads become giddy when the patently obvious is mentioned? My comment about general illiteracy - perhaps even mental infirmity - was meant to highlight the plight of muslim women in the West: mental servility. The only solution to that problem is education and empowerment. Although no one holds a gun to her head, a burka-binded woman in the West feels that she needs to conform with the desert dogma of her parents and relatives. Yes, she freely chooses to don this dreadful, demeaning attire because she operates under the delusion that God, who apparently only whispers in the ears of men, requires this of her. To be sure, it's an effective form of disenfranchisement. What better way to shear away the autonomy and freedom of women than to appeal to the heavens.

What does FGM (female genital mutilation), chastity belt, the Burka, and other mideival relics have in common? The answer is the control of female sexuality in particular and female freedom in general. The fact that some muslim women - mostly ill-educated- in the West freely choose to wear the Burka does not negate the fact it has always been a backward symbol, a symbol of oppression and subjugation. Men have always devised various methods and strategies to relegate the female to the status of a lesser individual. Religion has served as a useful tool in this regard. What is a poor girl to say when a preist, Imam, or Rabbi says God wants you to cover this way; or God's angels will curse you if you deny your husband sex? The emancipation of women did not happen overnight, rather it was a long, arduous struggle. And women did all the heavy-lifting and fighting for women rights. Not Men. Not religion.

In all fairness, the lopsided nature of this debate was a forgone conclusion. Raamsade's task, namely, arguing for the soundness of biological evolution seems easy, even effortless - because it is! To give a crude analogy, Raamsade has the appearance of a prosecutor who has an open-and-shut case: forensic evidence, confession, witness testimony, prior history, and other corroborating evidence. Thus, it's going to take more than the courtroom theatrics of a desperate defense attorney to persuade the jury to disregard the damning evidence. 2+2=5 finds herself in the unenviable position of having to launch an asinine assault on well-established science in favor of (and here's the kicker) just-so stories and creation myths. Evolution by natural selection, the 'cornerstone of modern biology', is a hoax; God magically puffing life into a mush of mud, well, that's a fact.

There are many countries which have eerily similiar flags such as Chad and Romania, Indonesia and Manaco, Luxemburg and Netherlands, differing only in the shades of colors used. Then there are countries that have flags which are dissimiliar in color arrangement and embelms, yet exhibit unmistakable similitude. Ireland and Ivory Coast, Russia and Serbia, Cuba and Puerto Rico, Mexico and Italy, and Bolivia and Ghana would be candidates for this category. One need not be a vexilollogist (someone who studies flags) to know such mundane facts. The flag of Puntland does share a resemblance to the flag of Sierre Leonne, inasmuch as colors, not arrangment and embelms, are concerned. However, if we go by those rules, the Somaliland flag shares an unmistakble likeness with countless flags of other countries such as: Kurdistan, Iran, Tajakistan, and Hungary. With a little rearrangement of colors, additions (or omissions) of embelms, every country will have the albatross of unoriginality and plaigarism over its neck. Piffle, indeed.

Self-deprecation can be a source of catharsis if it is coupled with satire. However, this kind of pitiful self-hatred is symptomatic of some deep-seated pyschological malady.

Originally posted by Cara.: We're going to kill you for calling us violent reactionaries? Does not compute. LOL. Great. Now I have coffee all over my laptop.