embraced Islam because they wanted a new religious system that gave women the divorce, a share in their wealth and the right to refuse marriage?
Sarcasm to Sputnik noted, the idea that woman had such rights is not new. Mohammed’s own wife, pre-Islam was (or so I thought) – a very powerful Arab woman? It doesn’t really jive with the notion that Arabs killed their females relatives and women were treated like shit. I’ve always wondered if that wasn’t a bit of propaganda and frankly still think so.
Anyway, a Roman woman who was not remarried could own property and basically was free to do as she liked in Roma. Probably, at the time, these were some of the most free women on the planet Earth.
Regardless, did women ever get these rights in a typical Islamic country? What of the year 2000? That, to me, is the measure.
As Islamic women did not get these rights – what does that say to you about the system of Islam?
[also not Mohammed taking umpteen wife’s and one we would today consider a child – certainly didn’t set a good precedence. I mean the age of consent in Rome was 18 and one could legally have one wife]
A system that " from the first denounced aristocratic privilege, rejected hierarchy, and adopted a formula of the career open to the talents"
Again, the Greeks, and Romans after them, removed their aristocratic rulers of heredity and formed a Democracy and a Republic.
And again, while the Greeks and Romans went about business for hundreds of years as such, did Islamic countries ever implement these freedoms?
If not what does that mean to you? What does it imply about Islam?
That "condemned practices of the Arabs such as female infanticide, exploitation of the poor, usury, murder, false contracts, fornication, adultery, and theft. [3] He states that Muhammad's "insistence that each person was personally accountable not to tribal customary law but to an overriding divine law shook the very foundations of Arabian society... Muhammad proclaimed a sweeping program of religious and social reform that affected religious belief and practices, business contracts and practices, male-female and family relations.""
Perhaps this had an effect on Arab society – but outside of these nomadic peoples, well, frankly the world was a different place – one full of rules of law and tradition. Greeks and Romans could Democratically change the Law.
Regardless, we must agree that these Ideals didn’t work in Islamic countries. The Islamic system you talk about, if it ever even worked at all, broke down immediately.
Even today, compare Singapore with Malaysia and Indonesia.
Whom are the more free?
I think you would agree in terms of society, The Communism Manifesto (an example I like to use) is much more thought out in terms of social responsibility when compared to Islam societal rules.
It was VERY fair. There is no room for Slavery or multiple wives or even a religious hierarchy.
People are for the betterment of the People.
It didn’t work either.
Do you think Communism is a good system?
Why or Why not?
Michael
