91–100 of 166 posts
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You should not paint all countries in the Middle East with the same brush.
You should not paint all countries in the Middle East with the same brush. How many Middle Eastern countries (besides Israel) have anything resembling democracy, or equal rights for women, or any rights for gay people?
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>>This is part of their legal system, which is called "islam", or "sharia" This has nothing to do with Islam. This is all about money and a few rich idiots abusing their power. Bulk of the practices you associate with any religion, are not that of a religion but that of the local civilization at that point of time. Your post resembles the attitude of the western masses today, which is to hold the perception created b…
I don't understand. What exactly are you saying is not true : 1) islam is a system of laws 2) those laws include slavery 3) people who are fighting to introduce those laws to society are reintroducing legal slavery 4) the muslim world is the major hotbet of slavery Copious evidence for all claims is easy to come by. Start with : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_views_on_slavery And if you want to hear it from an…
Think of it this way, if there were no courts and no defence lawyers and no-one ever bothered to read the legal statutes for themselves, then would the actual text of the law mean anything? Or wouldn't it rather be that, in application, the law would tend serve the interests of the police?
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Not the middle eastern countries. This is part of their legal system, which is called "islam", or "sharia" (translation: the right way for a muslim). Slavery (if you define it as forced labour without compensation), in case anyone doesn't know, is part of every religion. It is even part of Christianity, but Canon law specifies that it is a Christian's duty to, firstly, never own slaves themselves (with serious punish…
If you're looking for a religion to blame, start with capitalism. Islam has nothing to do with this. While you're at it you can start by looking at how unrepresentative of the Muslim world (if you an even use that term) the Gulf countries are - India and Indonesia are both home to many times more Muslims than the Gulf but yet you continue to judge the adherents of a religion by the actions of a few small countries ma…
@waps has already posted a link to [1]
> start with capitalism
Do you think it is "capitalism" when employers are not honouring contracts that they created, and their employees signed? After you have learnt what capitalism means, you'll see that the article is rich with examples of violations of capitalism.
I don't know about Indonesia, but India is, not by any stretch of imagination, representative of the Muslim world. [2] I don't know why you bring up India as an example of things going right in the Muslim world.
First of all, I think that slavery is a relative concept. The modern comparison archetype that most people know the most about is the American system of race based chattel slavery. But, there have been many many different systems all throughout history. All different. Slavery is something that exists on a difficult to define continuum.
Many (most?) countries have laws for emoting foreigners. They usually have more limited rights compared to citizens. Deportation looms. Residency is tied to employment. The country is not run for them. When it's a Belgian professor teaching in Russia, it obviously isn't slavery. When it's this poor Nepali man in Qatar isn't. There just isn't a clear line between the two. Contracts? Consent? What do those mean when you have the power differences between a Qatari Sheik and an illiterate.
Qatar is comparable in a lot of ways to ancient slave states. There are a small minority (2-5% depending on how you define it) of extremely privileged aristocracy, members of important families. Another 10% of Qatari citizens who make up most of the the professional class. The foreign professional class (10-15%) of mostly arabs and whites. They have fewer rights, but are materially well off. Then a vast underclass (50-60%) of poor foreigners with no rights and practical situations ranging from bad to awful. Work to death conditions. Sexual assault. Chattel-like system of employer-employee relations. Probably similar distributions to famous slave states like Sparta.
Why is this not front-page news of mainstream media? (I know why, it's because it's not profitable). But where is the outrage? Why is fighting back restricted to a few NGOs and some back office of the Nepalese government?
Because it would bring uncomfortable questions about the list of states that employ slavery, or effective slavery : Sudan, Mali, Niger, Chad, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Pakistan, Bangladesh. Hmmm I wonder what is driving the advancement of slavery, given that's the places where it's happening. An exploration of slavery would bring the very uncomfortable, but pretty well known, fact to the surface that slavery is pa…
I just did a Google book search for "black gold" on 19th-century books, and checked the first 100 results. None of them had anything to do with slavery (or with mineral oil). So far as the Google n-gram tool's corpus knows, the term became popular around 1920-1940.
I have been able to find a few references to "black gold" meaning slaves, but so far as I can tell from the snippets available on the web they have nothing to do with Islam. In the few cases where I can tell who the slavers were, they were specifically Americans.
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It is legalized slavery. These middle eastern countries are well known for that. That's why they are recruiting the poorest of the poor from rural areas in Asia. Foreign workers have 0 rights there. But hey these guys are US allies,the leader of democracy and the free world... they cant be bad , can they ...
Not the middle eastern countries. This is part of their legal system, which is called "islam", or "sharia" (translation: the right way for a muslim). Slavery (if you define it as forced labour without compensation), in case anyone doesn't know, is part of every religion. It is even part of Christianity, but Canon law specifies that it is a Christian's duty to, firstly, never own slaves themselves (with serious punish…
This, as others have pointed out, is a case of rich-exploits-poor. Unsurprisingly, with the full support of the law. Exit visa laws, for example, aren't exclusive to the Middle East. (Actually, of the Middle East, only Qatar and Saudi Arabia have it.) The Soviet Union had them, Uzbekistan still has them, even Nepal has them. And for a short while, both Germany and Italy had similar laws.
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I don't understand. What exactly are you saying is not true : 1) islam is a system of laws 2) those laws include slavery 3) people who are fighting to introduce those laws to society are reintroducing legal slavery 4) the muslim world is the major hotbet of slavery Copious evidence for all claims is easy to come by. Start with : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_views_on_slavery And if you want to hear it from an…
Islam isn't a system of laws, it's a religion. Like all organised religions, what's written in its holy books is of far less practical importance than what is preached by its leaders. Adherents don't read and figure out for themselves, they follow what they are told the books say. Like most religious leaders, the Islamic holy men tend to preach what is convenient to them. The fact that the religion is Islam isn't of…
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I've only been to a few countries in the Middle East, so I can't generalise. But one thing common among these countries is the lack of warmth, sincerity and humility among the locals. It is one of the most unpleasant and hostile cultures that I have encountered in my years of travel. They treat blue-collar foreigners as lesser humans. EDIT: To clarify, I've only been to Qatar, UAE and Bahrain.
What a load of crap. So you saw the airport in Qatar, stayed in a 5-Star hotel in the UAE and caught a connection at Bahrain without ever actually speaking to a local??? I can tell you from my experience of living in the UAE for 3 years and regularly travelling to Saudi overland via Bahrain, the locals are just like people anywhere in the world - some crappy, most decent, and some really nice. Minor differences inclu…
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Ugh, that was at once an impressive and disgusting array of not just wrong but ill-willed information, basically from start to finish. You don't deserve a full rebuttal, but just in case anyone should be in doubt. For just one example, Islamic law practically guarantees the eventual freeing of slaves. It is probably the most highlighted charitable act described in shariah. Missing a day of fasting must be atoned for…
Freeing a slave for missing a day of fasting? If that's the most charitable act in Sharia then you pretty much proved his point. And regardless of how people practice Islam, its texts are full of crap that I'll never have any respect for. Fuck Islam.
>> Islam encourages freeing slaves, but only in one circumstance : after they have completed a successful military campaign
> Missing a day of fasting must be atoned for by freeing a slave.
As an example. Among a hundred other ways in which slaves are set free. Your post was ignorance and lies.
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You should not paint all countries in the Middle East with the same brush.
Yeah there are great beaches in Dubai... and a lot of slaves building fancy hotels too, see , that's not the same.