Quote:That's right, like a knife you can peel potatoes with isn't a potato peeler.
OK Abu I edited my post so that it is more in line with your 'reasoning'. I find you find this acceptable:
freediver wrote on Nov 16
th, 2008 at 4:07pm:
Abu has used the term 'realistic' to describe Islam, usually in reference to why it ignores, or at least does not focus on things like forgiveness or turning the other cheek, or why it allows certain behaviours like
slaves that you can have sex with*. However, such an approach would make religion and law, both divine and secular, pointless. No law is realistic in the sense that everyone obeys it, or in the sense that everyone who breaks it gets punished. Setting such a standard would lead to anarchy. Religious law especially, or morals, are supposed to set the higher ground, not the lower ground, otherwise they become an excuse for evil rather than a call to the divine. I find it hard to understand why a religion that successfully requires it's adherents to pray five times a day and follow many other rituals would consider other moral standards as unrealistic.
I suspect that rather than being unrealistic, concepts such as turning the other cheek were largely left out of Islam because they represent a moral that is extremely difficult to translate into law. Islam does seem to have the same moral standards, as I have seen similar concepts expressed here. (I'm referring to Christianity when I say the 'same' as I don't know to what extent these moral exist in other religions.) It's just that they tend to take a lower priority because they were expressed as morals rather than laws. That is, the law allows the behaviour, but the moral discourages it to some extent. See the debate on replacing morals with rules for more on that aspect:
http://www.ozpolitic.com/forum/YaBB.pl?num=1225960213The only acceptable way to apply a standard of 'realistic' to law would be to base it not on whether a law would be obeyed, but on whether the enforcement of the law would do more harm than good. This concept is what is at the heart of the current debates over prostitution, drug law, no-fault divorce etc in western countries. Aiming for the high moral ground cannot do harm, even if you do not reach it. It is attempting to maintain the higher moral ground that does all the good.
* Note that saying Islam allows slaves that you can have sex with is not meant to imply that it allows sex slaves, which it clearly does not, and to say it does would obviously be slander.
The fact you *can* have, theoretically, marital relations with a slave
You mean sex, outside of marriage?
Quote:doesn't mean she's a sex slave
Right, she's a slave that you can have sex with. What's the difference again?
Quote:which is someone caputred specifically to have sex with
I see. So having sex with your slave is like an accident? You are not allowed to get a slave with the intention of having sex with them? It isn't allowed to affect your decisions in any way? If you capture a slave to pick cotton, then disover she is actually really hot so you move her to the bedroom, then she is not a slave?
Quote:What you envisage as "sex slave" is nothing to do with the Islamic concept of "Ma malakat aymanakum" being legal to you.
So your edit rests not on the correctness of what I said, but on how you think I conceptualise being allowed to have sex with slaves?
Quote:In regards to 'concubines' it goes without saying that to descibe such women as 'sex slaves' would imply that consent was not acheived.
When women are captured as sexs slaves in modern times (ie forced into work as prostitutes), they generally consent to each individual sexual encounter. Whether a person in such a vulnerable position consents becomes pretty meaningless. That's why consent is not considered an issue for carnal knowledge. Not that I am trying to equate Islamic sex slaves with prostitution rings, I'm just pointing out that the issue of consent loses most of it's meaning when applied to a slave. I did not necessarily mean that consent was not achieved. When I said sex slave I meant exaclty that - a slave you can have sex with. It's doesn't mean she can't cook and clean for you as well.
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