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At 16, Ganesh got a job in Qatar. Two months later he was dead

theguardian.com

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Re: At 16, Ganesh got a job in Qatar. Two months later he was dead

#111

Post by abup »

saljam wrote: post #96
waps wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Way to go on creating an completely irrelevant religious flamewar. As others have said, Islam has nothing to do with this. 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 h…

I am from Nepal. Where did you get that information from? Nepal does not have exit visas the way Qatar has them. The one mentioned in Wikipedia article applies only when one (a Nepalese citizen) goes back to Nepal to get his H1 visa stamped.

Re: At 16, Ganesh got a job in Qatar. Two months later he was dead

#112

Post by waps »

aldous wrote: post #101
cmdkeen wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except Christianity broadly doesn't believe in the Bible being the literal word of God and thus all of those rules applying now - and no country accepts it as their view of Christianity. Biblical infallibility is a modern, revivalist concept. Even during the good old days of the Mediaeval Church no-one stoned adulterers. No Christian country has laws stoning people on the basis of "it's in the Bible". However it is t…

A valuable point worth noting in relation to this is the fact that Jesus, in the new testament, specifically dismisses such practices as stoning: John 8:7. “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.” http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/let_him_who_is_without_sin_cas... It is one of the central tenets of Christian faith that one should not judge others. Quotes attributed to Jesus explicitly state…

Funny that you mention that. You see islam has that exact story in it's holy books, but with a slightly different outcome :

Bukhari :: Book 6 :: Volume 60 :: Hadith 79 "The Jews brought to the Prophet a man and a woman from among them who had committed illegal sexual intercourse. The Prophet said to them, "How do you usually punish the one amongst you who has committed illegal sexual intercourse?" They replied, "We blacken their faces with coal and beat them," He said, "Don't you find the order of Ar-Rajm (i.e. stoning to death) in the Torah?" They replied, "We do not find anything in it." 'Abdullah bin Salam (after hearing this conversation) said to them. "You have told a lie! Bring here the Torah and recite it if you are truthful." (So the Jews brought the Torah). And the religious teacher who was teaching it to them, put his hand over the Verse of Ar-Rajm and started reading what was written above and below the place hidden with his hand, but he did not read the Verse of Ar-Rajm. 'Abdullah bin Salam removed his (i.e. the teacher's) hand from the Verse of Ar-Rajm and said, "What is this?" So when the Jews saw that Verse, they said, "This is the Verse of Ar-Rajm." So the Prophet ordered the two adulterers to be stoned to death, and they were stoned to death near the place where biers used to be placed near the Mosque. I saw her companion (i.e. the adulterer) bowing over her so as to protect her from the stones."

Let me repeat that last sentence: 'I saw her companion (i.e. the adulterer) bowing over her so as to protect her from the stones.'

If any muslim can answer this question : who was the most moral person in this story. The prophet or the adulterer ? Because the answer is VERY clear to me.

Re: At 16, Ganesh got a job in Qatar. Two months later he was dead

#113

Post by abup »

I am from Nepal. The irony in all this is that we Nepalese will keep flying the Qatar Airways. The Nepalese airlines, a state-owned corporation, used to have regular flights to many busy destinations like Frankfurt. But like with everything that has happened in Nepal for the last 10-15 years, this has gone downhill.

Qatar bribed many Football Associations in FIFA to get this world cup bid. One of them was Nepal. The Nepalese FA's president is in good terms with the Qatari FA, and was apparently given nice kickbacks for voting in their favor.

Re: At 16, Ganesh got a job in Qatar. Two months later he was dead

#114

Post by gjm11 »

waps wrote: post #109
gjm11 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of your other claims here have already been refuted, but here's one more. If "black gold" ever mostly meant slaves rather than oil, then the editors of the Oxford English Dictionary would like to hear from you. (They say: "colloq. (orig. N. Amer.) petroleum; mineral oil" and their earliest citation is from 1910.) I just did a Google book search for "black gold" on 19th-century books, and checked the first 100 re…

Let me google that for you : http://library.thinkquest.org/10320/Tour.htm The English colonist in the New World imported white indentured workers at first, but found there weren't enough of them. The Indians in the Americas refused to work or proved to be poorly fitted for long hours of hard labor. The Europeans found it easier and cheaper to import Africans as slaves. By the seventeenth century, the African slave tr…

As I said:

> I have been able to find a few references to "black gold" meaning slaves

I am not claiming that no one has ever used the term to mean slaves.

What I am disputing is (1) your claim that in the 19th and 20th centuries the term was popular with this main meaning, and (2) your claim that it had anything to do with Islam.

On #1, I find that the term was extremely rare until it started being used to describe oil in the 20th century.

On #2, note that the slavers mentioned in your particular links were all Western European or American. Guess how many of them were Muslims? I'm thinking the answer is somewhere between "exactly zero" and "zero to within statistical sampling error".

Re: At 16, Ganesh got a job in Qatar. Two months later he was dead

#116

Post by jbooth »

levosmetalo wrote: post #57
jbooth wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My usual take on these things is it's more about money and what you can get away with locally than the character of the religions themselves. Lots of very christian Americans had very christian outlooks on slavery being legal in the 1850s, and on unequal rights being the way of things (noah and ham) up until the 1960s. If I were looking for a religion that didn't have a history of justifying slavery, I'd point to may…

Well, there are different flavours of crhistianity as well as different flavours of islam. While christian Americans did indeed support slavery, the eastern (Orthodox) christianity was never involved in such behaviour. I'm pretty sure that not all islamic countries were openly supporting slavery, it's just the desert ones. That being said, I agree that it's more middle east phenomenon that islam phenomenon. The other…

Not to nitpick, but the byzantine empire, seat of orthodox christianity for its first 1000 years, condoned slavery:

http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674036116

Re: At 16, Ganesh got a job in Qatar. Two months later he was dead

#117

Post by Mikeb85 »

flumbaps wrote: post #92
waps wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Islam absolutely contains a set of laws. For the Muslim, you cannot have the religion without the law. Even in countries where Islam is the minority, disputes between Muslims are settled by a community Islamic court...

Re: At 16, Ganesh got a job in Qatar. Two months later he was dead

#118

Post by twic »

contingencies wrote: post #41
CervezaPorFavor wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They treat blue-collar foreigners as lesser humans. Singapore, too.

And Buckinghamshire.

Re: At 16, Ganesh got a job in Qatar. Two months later he was dead

#119

Post by waps »

contingencies wrote: post #37
wavefunction wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not part of Islam, since you don't find it going on in Malaysia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Islamic Africa, or the West where muslims live as well. This is instead confined to the Gulf states. I'm really very curious about where you're pulling all this stuff from.

I agree it's not part of Islam. However, effective slavery of foreign workers does go on in those places, often with local or national government conspiracy. Malaysia is a prime example. In the previous article, the family interviewed in Nepal lost one son to construction slavery in Qatar and one to the same in Malaysia. Furthermore, Sharia law has been waved around in the western media as the height of evil (like th…

So it's not part of islam because sharia has been abolished ? Heh. Maybe you should tell a few muslims.

Re: At 16, Ganesh got a job in Qatar. Two months later he was dead

#120

Post by aestra »

bayesianhorse wrote: post #104
vellum wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If these countries have oil money in abundance then why don't they give good working conditions and pay more money Racism. There's a certain pecking order in the Gulf: 1.) Locals, 2.) Other Gulf nationals, 3.) Whites (Western), 4.) Non-white professionals (Western) 5.) Other Arabs (professionals), 5.) South Asian professionals, 6.) Working class (busboys/waiters/etc.), 7.) Day laborers (mostly South Asian). If you se…

It's been a tough journey of about 200 years to eliminate most of this thinking in the west. It's certainly hard to watch this process unfold in other countries. The process is certainly faster than it was in the west but still excruciatingly slow.

This thinking hasn't been eliminated in the West.
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