@JC Whitless: That's about 18,200 miles a year just on your commute!(Assuming 260 working days per year, or the federal full time standard of 2080 hours, then divided by eight.)
That's higher than the national per-capita average of miles driven per year (around 15,000) just on your commute alone, not counting all extra miles.
That's higher than the national per-capita average of miles driven per year (around 15,000) just on your commute alone, not counting all extra miles.
@gawkimo: PS: It might be deeply spiritual, but the only requirement is Haj. Millions and millions of Muslims routinely treat the pilgrimage as a "spiritual maintenance" -- they go, they go back, they go back again. Nothing in Islam requires that -- so those that do so are economically empowering labor rights abuses and discrimination against women. They don't care -- because it's all about them. Go on Haj, throw the stones, then never go back to Saudi. That's a spiritual requirement of Muslims as far as I can tell. Those that ignore these problems and selfishly go repeatedly are a.) robbing somebody else of their "slot" to do Haj or b.) economically empowering some bad stuff even when it is not required of them by their faith.
PLUS: The people that are doing so gotta stop treating the Prophet and Mecca like a kind-of God. It's completely hypocritical to condemn other faiths for bowing to rock while their own faith requires them to do just that. And: the Prophet was just a man. Says so in their own words.
OK, I gotta stop talking about this here. Most people don't know hat I'm talkings about and don't care. I maintain my right to criticize the behavior of some (many, actually) Muslims without being labeled a bigot.
@spikenard: Let me be clear. The important sites are very well maintained. It's the city itself that's a Third World crap hole -- unfortunately much of the Ummah lives in places like that, left to fend for themselves by despotic, corrupt gov'ts. (the kind that, say, permit slavery until 1964 in Mecca).
I think we both agree that the hope lies in the progressive Muslim movement and the non-Muslims need to understand what's going on (including liberals so they don't call people like me bigots for simply stating facts).
@spikenard: "already, there are growing liberal and feminist schools of Islamic jurisprudence"
I know that weirdo Gawker douche weekend editor thinks I'm a bigot, but I agree with you completely. And I think progressive Muslims should boycott Umrah (maybe not their ONE Haj, if they must) and can do a lot more about the occupation of the holy sites if they feel they must still hold on to the idea that they must go to Mecca once in their life.
Progressive Muslims are going to do a lot more to fix the problems than even a self-righteous neo-PC Gawker editor can by punishing "Islamophobic" commenter who merely point out that slavery was legal in Mecca up to 1964.
PS: I'm probably the only Keffer here who's actually been to Mecca: except for the important sites (the Haram, Mina, Muzalifa, etc.) the city is a Third World shithole.
@spikenard: That made me laugh. But then apparently I'm a bigot for pointing out that slavery was legal in Mecca and Medinah until 1964 or that performing Umrah and Haj (a billion-dollar industry) economically empowers labor and women's rights abuses in the KSA in much the same way buying oil does.
Also: the OIC's official stance is that the crime of defamation should extend to "defaming religion." (They include all religions, but who are we kidding? It would still be legal to consider Shiites infidels and depict hook-nosed Jews as drinking the blood of Palestinian babies -- but a cartoon depicting an Abrahamic prophet would, if the OIC had its way, be a crime of defamation. The OIC is not a fringe group.
None of this is a condemnation of Muslim individuals, by the way. It is a condemnation of the organization of the faith as a political entity controlled by bunch of despots who use it to control people in the developing world (where Islam is growing the fastest).
But according to some, people who say these things are bigots.
@Ravi Somaiya: I wrote this in another related post:
"I forgot to mention in my shitty hypothetical anecdote above that during Younus Abdullah Mohammed's walk though a safe, well-built masterpiece of Western ingenuity and American can-do-ism, he walks past a mosque in Brooklyn, where peaceful, law abiding citizens are practicing their freedom to worship, sending their kids to college and in some cases even the US military to go fight overseas for America, who have the same hopes an dreams of every American shlubb (cue in patriotic music)."
My pojnt was that Darwin was against slavery before both European (Western) and the Islamic world was against slavery. And it is a fact that Saudi Arabia was one of the last countries to abolish slavery, in 1964 (or 1962, depending on your source).
I could go on about how the Hajj -- as it is performed today -- helps to financially enable Saudi Arabia not only to support slavery prior to its abolishing -- in the 1960s -- but also to continue to exploit laborers as it does today -- economically exploiting Third World laborers while millions of Mulisms look the other way and financially enable this "occupation of Mecca" by the Saudi government.
But that is neither here nor there, really. My point was that Darwin was ahead of Europe and the Muslim world (at the time) in terms of slavery.
So my point was really two-fold: #1.) that Darwin was morally superior to Europeans and Muslims in his time regarding slavery, and #2.) Muslims have financially supported slavery (until 1960s) and economic slavery (to this day) by paying the Saudi government (including the state-owned airline, and the Tawafa tour groups) to perform one of the pillars of Islam.
I'm not some bigot hick out of the woods, chief.
PS: I know a couple of Someiyas in south Egypt (Nubia). Is that an East African name? They are good people. As an American born and bred I do not discriminate, as you suggest, against individuals who have beliefs that differ from mine. But I do oppose slavery, economic slavery and those who economically empower it, regardless of their justifications.
And Darwin was way ahead of Europeans and Muslims of his time. WAY ahead.
@Ravi Somaiya: I didn't say Muslims condone slavery -- I was pointing out that Darwin was ahead of his time, ahead of both Europe and the Islamic world in terms of being against slavery. Also having spent most of five years in two predominantly Muslim countries, nothing I've said here is something I haven't said to the face of Muslims themselves, who were far more accepting of my views than the moderator on this gossipy website that probably shouldn't be bringing up "the clash of civilizations" if he doesn't want to hear comments he deems untoward.
@loupgarous: Or have their stars taken away . Boo hoos!
@loupgarous: Responding with violence to an offensive person's expressions is exactly what that ax-welding prick did when he tried to break into the home of Mr. Westergaard to behead him. It's also what sent Rushdie into hiding and what torched Scandinavian embassies and a KFC in Karachi.
I forgot to mention in my shitty hypothetical anecdote above that during Younus Abdullah Mohammed's walk though a safe, well-built masterpiece of Western ingenuity and American can-do-ism, he walks past a mosque in Brooklyn, where peaceful, law abiding citizens are practicing their freedom to worship, sending their kids to college and in some cases even the US military to go fight overseas for America, who have the same hopes an dreams of every American shlubb (cue in patriotic music). So, no, people like him (or those tribal hicks in the Taleban, or those people who punish women who get raped) do not represent Muslims.
Besides: If shooting a person for practicing his right to be a disgraceful schmuck on a website is punishable by vigilante justice, a lot of us would have to wear bulletproof vests.
@james_cambridge: Also: Darwin was against (and spoke out against) slavery long before Europeans Muslim countries were against slavery. The cradle of Islam (Saudi Arabia) banished slavery in 1964.
@Dekster: Sorry, I can't help it! I'm just being a Western hedgemon!
"They are not more important than the hegemonic wars the West is fighting against Islam," said Younus before stepping out into the streets of New York to ride a safe and dependable 24-hour subway, exit onto well-paved streets, enter an airport to engage in safe commercial air travel (all courtesy of the West), where he takes a flight to the Islamic Paradise of Jalalabad, where Muslims have created the perfect Shariah-based Utopia -- where absolutely nothing is wrong with the society except for the meddling of those evil khawaja Westerners. And there Younus Abdullah Mohammed is welcome to stay and marry off his 12-year-old daughter to his 60-year-old cousin, or whatever the fuck those tribal hicks do when they're not blaming all of their woes on the evil West.
Because what Islam needs right now more than anything are more shlubby converts creating more websites suggesting that people who make untoward cartoons could end up being fatally stabbed in a Dutch bike lane by a Moroccan hillbilly.
Because quietly injecting bad people (or the mentally ill, or falsely condemned, one) with poison at a small gathering of prison guards and invited guests is obviously more ethical.
