Saudi Arabia vs. Sweden

Here is an examples of the epitome of a religious state, contrasted with the epitome of a "secular" or "progressive" state.

Let me preemptively summarize the situation. Sweden mandates "progress". Saudi Arabia mandates Islam.

We notice a curious symmetry between the "secular" principles of progress and the religious principles of Islam. Both display a deep hostility toward other religions that oppose them, and aggressively persecute those religions through law.

Quotes about Saudi Arabia are taken from the Wikipedia article Human Rights in Saudi Arabia.

As an Islamic state, Saudi Arabia gives preferential treatment for Muslims. During Ramadan, eating, drinking, or smoking in public during daylight hours is not allowed. Foreign schools are often required to teach a yearly introductory segment on Islam. Saudi religious police have detained Shi'ite pilgrims participating in the Hajj, allegedly calling them "infidels in Mecca". The restrictions on the Shi'a branch of Islam in the Kingdom along with the banning of displaying Jewish, Hindu and Christian symbols have been referred to as apartheid

Sweden's anti-discrimination laws are as bizarre as they are magical. Hairdressers are not allowed to vary their prices based on gender, putting up the price of a short-back-and-sides towards the £50 mark. Taxis which used to offer special rates to single women going home late at night have been told to stop. Women can swim topless in public pools unless there is a law to require men cover their nipples. Stockholm District Court recently ruled that pregnancy was an illness. Activists are pushing to end gender specific pronouns in the language. More men than women now complain to the discrimination ombudsman.

In Saudi Arabia, the state will tell you not to display Christian symbols in public. In Sweden, the state will often tell you not to display Christian symbols in public (in many circumstances, that qualifies as discrimination, especially if you are at a place of work).

In Saudi Arabia, women are required to wear modest clothes. In Sweden, private institutions cannot discriminate against women wearing immodest clothes, unless men are required to wear the same type of clothes.

Saudi women face discrimination in many aspects of their lives, such as the justice system. Although they make up 70% of those enrolled in universities, for social reasons, women make up 5% of the workforce in Saudi Arabia, the lowest proportion in the world. The treatment of women has been referred to as "sex segregation" and "gender apartheid".

In Saudi Arabia, people are required to be sex-segregated. In Sweden, anti-discrimination law prohibits sex-segregation. These rules are applied to government institutions, as well as private institutions.

According to a 2009 Human Rights Watch report, Shia citizens in Saudi Arabia "face systematic discrimination in religion, education, justice, and employment". Saudi Arabia has no Shia cabinet ministers, mayors or police chiefs, according to another source, Vali Nasr, unlike other countries with sizable Shia populations (such as Iraq and Lebanon) . Shia are kept out of "critical jobs" in the armed forces and the security services, and not one of the three hundred Shia girls’ schools in the Eastern Province has a Shia principal.

We can compare this with racists, sexists, and homophobes, who are discriminated against in Swedish religion, education, justice, and employment. It is important to remember that believing what the Bible says about women submitting to their husbands is "sexist" by any normal modern definition of the word.

Saudi Arabia: Because anti-Shia attitudes are engrained from an early age, they are passed down from generation to generation. This prejudice is found not only in textbooks (often characterizing the faith as a form of heresy worse than Christianity and Judaism), but also within the teachers in the classroom, and even in the university setting. (Wahhabi) teachers frequently tell classrooms full of young Shia schoolchildren that they are heretics. Teachers who proclaim that Shiites are atheists and deserve death have faced no repercussions for their actions, barely even receiving punishment.

We can compare this with Swedish teachers, who are rarely punished for saying that "the pope", "racists", "sexists", "homophobes" are heretics evil.

Jerusalem Post: Sweden v. Religion - Freedom of worship on trial

Rabbi Alexander Namdar and Rebbetzin Leah Namdar have chosen to home-school their children, thus giving them a Jewish education and ensuring they can still live full Jewish lives. 

Sweden has very tight restrictions on home-schooling, allowing it only in what they call “extraordinary circumstances.” In the ultra-secular country of Sweden, religion is not considered an extraordinary circumstance.

The city of Gothenburg is threatening to fine the Namdar family 2400 dollars per week if they do not comply and put their children in public school, which to me seems like nothing short of forced assimilation. If, chas v’chalilah (G-d forbid), the Namdar children are put in public school they would not be able to uphold their orthodox Jewish lives. The city of Gothenburg is not only taking radical steps to assimilate the Namdar family, they are also putting their children at risk of anti-Semitic bullying, or worse. The crime they are committing is trying to give their children a Jewish education and ensuring they stay Jewish in a secular society, all while being a haven for other Jews in the area, providing kosher meals, religious services and learning. For this, they are being persecuted. For this, they may have to leave.

Sweden's education policy is essentially forced integration. Religious subcultures are forcibly assimilated. Children may be Jewish on the Sabbath, or Christian on Sunday, but are required to learn Progressive things on Monday-Friday.

[Saudi Arabian] speech, the press and other forms of communicative media, including television and radio broadcasting and Internet reception, are actively censored by the government to prevent political dissent and anything deemed, by the government, to be offensive to the Wahhabi culture or Islamic morality.

Censorship in Sweden

Sweden prohibits hate speech, and defines it as publicly making statements that threaten or express disrespect for an ethnic group or similar group regarding their race, skin colour, national or ethnic origin, faith or sexual orientation.

In Saudi Arabia, it is usually illegal to express disrespect for the prophet Muhammad and the religion of Islam. In Sweden, it is often illegal to express disrespect for the prophet Muhammad and the religion of Islam, and a thousand other religions.

(unless you are criticizing Muhammad for being insufficiently progressive, in which case you are likely to be given leniency)

Homosexuality is frequently a taboo subject in Saudi Arabian society and is punished with imprisonment, corporal punishment and capital punishment. Transgenderism is generally associated with homosexuality.

LGBT Rights in Sweden

The Constitution of Sweden bans discrimination on grounds of "sexual orientation". In 1987 discrimination against gay men and lesbians was included in the section of the penal code which deals with discrimination on grounds of race, etc. In 2008 transgender identity or expression was added to a new unified discrimination code which came into force 1 January 2009.

In Saudi Arabia, public sodomy will typically be punished by imprisonment or whipping. In Sweden, discrimination against sodomy will typically be punished by requiring the discriminating person to pay the "victim" of discrimination a large sum of money. If he does not pay the "victim", the police will seize his assets.

Fun with Synonyms

Universal Declaration of Human Rights

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is a declaration adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 10 December 1948 at the Palais de Chaillot, Paris. The Declaration arose directly from the experience of the Second World War and represents the first global expression of rights to which all human beings are inherently entitled.

Synonyms are fun. Here are some.

Universal : Catholic
Declaration :  Profession
of
Human : Natural ("natural" is defined as "being in accordance with or determined by human nature")
Rights : Law (since it's being used in a legal context)


I propose a different title.

Catholic Profession of Natural Law

The United Nations claims to be a secular institution. Yet they use decidedly religious language.

I think the Catholic religion based in New York is worse than the Catholic religion based in Rome. Though due to the increasing Roman Catholic involvement with ecumenism and leftist activism, I suspect that most Roman Catholics (including the Pope) believe in the Primacy of New York.

Monoculture and Big Government

One of the more interesting things in American history is the disappearance of ethnic groups in to a generic monoculture. One hundred years ago, Irish Catholics usually married Irish Catholics. They didn't usually marry Protestants, or even other Catholic ethnicities. The same was true for German Lutherans, and the Anglo/Episcopalian establishment.

Louisiana used to Cajun country. Latinos used to speak Spanish, but today Spanish is primarily spoken by Latinos that recently immigrated. Except for Orthodox Jews, it's difficult to tell a Jew from a non-Jew.

This is not historically normal. Three hundred years ago, all Jews were Orthodox, and none were Americanized (or French-ized, or whatever). Ireland is a relatively small country, but managed to develop non-Irish languages, for example Cant

I would imagine that our mass media and mass education has a homogenizing effect. But I suspect the larger cause is the United States Government (USG)

If people live under the same laws, a monoculture tends to emerge. Especially if the government is very large, and encompasses a large portion of society.

The Amish are a subculture, and their attempts to keep themselves autonomous from the mass culture consistently places them in conflict with the USG. The Amish have successfully held off the USG, but not without difficulty.

I expect that less devout religious subcultures have have had less success in holding off the USG. And the Amish are allowed this freedom on religious grounds only. Subcultures that are not primarily religious would not be given this measure of autonomy by the USG.

Scripture and Race

The Bible never directly addresses the subject of race. There really isn't a Biblical example of a multi-racial society. The darkest-skinned people in the Bible would have been Ethiopians. The lightest-skinned would have likely been Italians. And both were fairly rare. From what I understand, most people in the Bible would have looked like modern Palestinians.

The Old Testament is quite comfortable with clans, and favoritism based on family. The New Testament deals less with a clan system, but strongly reinforces the family-first mentality.

1 Timothy 5:8 (ESV) But if anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for members of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.

If we assume that a "race" is a collection of related clans, then it is difficult to reconcile Christianity and the doctrine of universal human equality. It can't be sinful to prioritize people more closely related to you, if we are commanded to prioritize people more closely related to us.

Of course, "race" is a very ambiguous concept. And people define it differently.

American Jizya

There is nothing new under the sun.

Wikipedia: Jizya

Under Islamic law, jizya ... is a per capita tax levied on a section of an Islamic state's non-Muslim subjects, who meet certain criteria. The tax is and was to be levied on able-bodied adult males of military age (but with specific exemptions). From the point of view of the Muslim rulers, jizya was a material proof of the non-Muslims' acceptance of subjection to the state and its laws. In return, non-Muslim subjects are permitted to practice their faith, to enjoy a measure of communal autonomy, to be entitled to the Muslim state's protection from outside aggression, and to be exempted from military service and from the zakat tax levied upon Muslim citizens.

Black history

In July [of 1970] the IRS concluded, based upon a January ruling by the District Court for the District of Columbia, that it could “no longer legally justify allowing tax-exempt status to private schools which practice racial discrimination.” (IRS News Release, July 7, 1970) In a letter dated November 30, the IRS formally notified private schools, including those involved in the earlier litigation, of this change in policy, “applicable to all private schools in the United States at all levels of education.”

Institutions that racially discriminate are subject to a tax. Institutions that do not racially discriminate are not subject to a tax. In other words, if your institution does not believe in our spiritual doctrine of human equality, you must pay Jizya.

In 1978, the Mormon church received a "revelation" from God that discovered that there should be no racial requirements for the Mormon priesthood. And in the last 60 years, most Protestant churches and the Roman Catholic church, have made gender/racial equality a significant part of their theology.

Is there any connection between the special taxes applied to racist/sexist/homophobic institutions, and the increasing prevalence of anti-racist, anti-sexist, and anti-homophobic teachings in churches?

Feminists and the Definition of Consent

Feminists tend to have a very limited definition of consent. I've tried to outline a few of their principles.

1) Consent, once given, may always be reversed.

In Christian societies, a wife who consented to marriage was consenting to be permanently sexually available to her husband. This is based on explicit Christian teaching, most notable St. Paul's instructions in 1 Corinthians 7:3-5. If you believe this teaching, marital rape is an oxymoron.

If we believe that a person genuinely owns their body, they can presumably sell their body. However, our legal system is not based on private property, or Christian law. It is based on feminist moral norms.

2) Consent must be free from economic or social pressure

Prostitutes sell temporarily sexual availability for money. If the prostitute owns her body, this is obviously not a violation of private property. But it is a violation of feminist morality, and may be declared rape.

3) Consent cannot be obtained through fraud or other improper means

From the Feminist Perspectives on Rape:

Cases of nonconsensual but unforced sex, on the other hand, include those in which the victim is induced to have sex through fraudulent misrepresentation (for instance, a doctor telling her that sex with him is necessary for her cure), and those in which she is coerced through nonviolent means (for instance, a professor telling her that she must have sex with him to pass the course). The tendency of the law to see such encounters as meaningfully consensual departs strikingly from how consent is understood in other areas; as West observes, “fraud or coercion that vitiates consent in nonsexual contexts constitutes either criminal or tortious activity” (240).

Code-speak and Acadmic Leftism

When you talk to someone, you typically want to communicate your message clearly. However, sometimes communicating your message clearly will get you in trouble with someone else. So you're trying to communicate with one person, while disguising your meaning.

For example, adults often develop code phrases to obliquely talk about sex around children and sensitive adults. Phrases like "have sex" or "fuck" become phrases like "go home with" or "sleep with".

Older children and adults may grasp what "going home with" someone actually entails, but young children don't. And sensitive adults can partially ignore the actual meaning of "going home with" someone, since it only implies sex, rather then explicitly stating it.

We notice this in academia. When an academic feminist uses the word "rape" she is probably not using the dictionary Merriam Webster definition:

to force (someone) to have sex with you by using violence or the threat of violence

For example, in the Standford Encyclopedia of Philosophy we see the entry Feminist Perspectives on Rape:

One limitation of a purely performative account of consent is that it does not take into account the context in which the relevant behavior or utterance occurs. For instance, if a woman says “yes” or even feigns sexual enthusiasm in order to keep a knife-wielding attacker from becoming angry and hurting or killing her, it would be absurd to regard her behavior or utterance as consent (or at least as meaningful consent). The question is what other contextual constraints and pressures may also undermine the validity of a woman's (apparent) consent. To put the point another way, having granted that “no” always means no, we must recognize that, in some cases, “yes” also means no. There are many kinds of explicit and implicit threats that render a woman's consent to sex less than meaningful: the man may threaten to sue for custody of their children, to derail her green card application, to evict her, or simply to sulk and make her life miserable for days should she refuse to have sex. Which (if any) such nonviolent coercive pressures should be regarded as rape, either morally or legally, is a matter of some controversy (Schulhofer 1998; Burgess-Jackson 1996, 91-106).

The question is especially important from a feminist point of view, since it is to be expected that in a patriarchal society men frequently hold positions of social, legal, and/or institutional power over women and are thus positioned to withhold important benefits from women who refuse them sexual access, in addition to threatening harms and penalties. Viewing at least certain kinds of nonviolent coercive pressures as incompatible with meaningful consent may yield the conclusion that some quid pro quo sexual harassment is also rape (Falk 1998). Furthermore, some radical feminists' description of prostitution as “commercial sexual violence” (Jeffreys 1997) reflects an expansive understanding of the economic and other coercive pressures that often compel women's consent to sexual acts in prostitution (even where physical violence does not play a role)

The term "rape" is used by feminists as code.

Suppose an academic feminist is speaks to another academic feminist. If she uses the word "rape", they both know that it includes most instances of sexual intercourse, and possibly instances of non-sexual-intercourse. The feminist use of the word "rape" is essentially a condemnation of men having sex in a way that doesn't acknowledge women as superior is insufficiently feminist.

However, if a commoner overhears them, the commoner thinks that they're talking about a man grabbing an innocent woman in the park, and forcing himself on her. So the commoner hears a feminist say something to the effect of

"I got a raise for having sex with my boss was raped by my boss, so we need to enact policy X to prevent workplace rape"

And the commoner supports policy X. Of course, policy X is some way of harassing males at work and indoctrinating people with feminist propaganda.

Feminists talk about harassing men for doing normal things like having sex, drinking alcohol, peeing while standing up, et cetera. However, since they use code words like "rape", commoners cannot tell that they are harassing men for normal behavior.

Other code words include "sexist", "chauvinistic", "misogynistic", "discrimination", and "sexual harassment".