Women of A2K, have you seen this ?

First: You can hold personal beliefs without forcing them on people at work, or putting them into your work.

Second: So, you advocate that Muslims, Catholics, Christians, Jews cannot hold public office?

Only atheists and agnostics need apply?

Guys...this is a trick that sofia forwards without recognizing it.

The claim is that Christians are victims. They are, says the claim, victimized for holding a belief or for trying to forward their belief within the polity.

So, if a fellow like Holmes says that, say, he thinks that church and state ought not to be separated. Or that separation has gone too far. Or that women ought to be subservient to men in a marriage. Or that gay sex is perverse and unnatural and ought to be banned or be reduced through institutional roadblocks. And let's say that each of these notions arises from his particular Christian membership (many Christians, of course, don't have such beliefs or interpretations).

Now, when someone speaks out against these ideas, the claim is forwarded that such is an attack on religion or on Christianity. Holmes is the victim of anti-religious prejudice. Holmes is being victimized.

What's actually happened is that some bright legal boys working for the right have adopted the language of the civil rights movement and turned it around.

Under this formulation that sofia and others advance, one could in very short order find the relevant quotes that would, if attribution was unknown, lead sofia to label a significant number of the writers of the constitution as being bigoted against religion.

Let's say that Holmes had argued for a theocracy. There are a good number of evangelicals who see such a system as ideal or preferable to the present situation. Under sofia's notion of what can and can't be argued regarding ideas originating from scripture or those who interpret scripture a certain way, then protests against any appointment of Holmes would be anti-religious bigotry which victimizes the believer and the belief.

Sofia,

I don't think it's unreasonable to wonder if the judicial rulings of someone who advocates that women are subservient to men might reflect that belief.

Do you support the positions of the appointees noted in the original list ? Just curious.

TV sermon advises husbands of such women to carry rod on shoulder

In his sermon broadcast on Qatar TV, a Muslim cleric claims some wives, due to their nature, must be beaten.

The cleric's Aug. 27 message to the faithful was translated by the Middle East Media Research Institute TV Monitor Project, or MEMRI TV. The video of the sermon can be viewed on MEMRI's website.

"We must know that [wife] beating is a punishment in Islamic religious law," the cleric stated. "No one should deny this because this was permitted by the Creator of Man, and because when you purchase an electric appliance or a car you get instructions - a catalogue, explaining how to use it. The Creator of Man has sent down this book [the Quran] in order to show man which ways he must choose."

The speaker claims the non-Muslim world is ignorant of the truth about wife beating.

"We shouldn't be ashamed before the nations of the world who are still in their days of ignorance, to admit that these [beatings] are part of our religious law," he said. "We must remind the ignorant from among the Islamic Nation who followed the [West] that those [Westerners] acknowledge the wondrous nature of this verse," he said, noting that there are three types of women "with whom life is impossible without beatings."

He continued: "In America, 6 million women are beaten by their husbands every year. These are their own official statistics. Four-thousand to six-thousand women die as a result of their husbands' beatings. London police, every year, answer 100,000 phone calls and complaints of attacks against wives. In France, their slogan is, 'Beat the wife morning, noon and night, and don't ask her why - she knows the reason.'"

The cleric then defends the practice but qualifies his approval, saying Islam forbids beating anyone, even animals, on the face.

Claiming women naturally want to be controlled by men, the cleric declared, "Allah has created woman, whether Muslim or infidel, so she is happy under a strong man who will protect her and lives with her."

Concluding his message, the preacher explains to his listeners the three types of women who must be beaten:

"[The Koran says:] 'and beat them.' This verse is of a wondrous nature. There are three types of women with whom a man cannot live unless he carries a rod on his shoulder. The first type is a girl who was brought up this way. Her parents ask her to go to school and she doesn't - they beat her. 'Eat' - 'I don't want to' - they beat her. So she became accustomed to beatings; she was brought up that way. We pray Allah will help her husband later. He will only get along with her if he practices wife beating.

"The second type is a woman who is condescending toward her husband and ignores him. With her, too, only a rod will help. The third type is a twisted woman who will not obey her husband unless he oppresses her, beats her, uses force against her, and overpowers her with his voice."

We have to make sure there are no Muslim judges in America...