Which religion’s holy book suggests that if a girl gets raped in a town, it’s her own fault and she should be executed for being such a dirty slut?
Which religion’s holy book suggests that if a girl gets raped in a town, it’s her own fault and she should be executed for being such a dirty slut?
Go on, then. It’s obviously not the Quran. Talmud? Maimonides? Bible? Dianetics?
The bible Deuteronomy 22:23-24
Bet you Googled that…
Then Moses stood in the gate of the camp, and said, Who is on the LORD’s side? let him come unto me. And all the sons of Levi gathered themselves together unto him.
And he said unto them, Thus saith the LORD God of Israel, Put every man his sword by his side, and go in and out from gate to gate throughout the camp, and slay every man his brother, and every man his companion, and every man his neighbour.
Do you doubt my encyclopedic knowledge of the bible? Shame on you my son for you shall burn in the unholy fires of hell as punishment for believing bananas to be edible.
Not the whole truth – she should only be stoned to death if she didn’t scream for help. In other words – if she loved it really…
No – the text (well, my Hebrew isn’t that great, but all the English translations I’ve read, which is several) suggests that if she’s raped in a city then definitionally she didn’t scream for help (presumably if she had done, the logic goes, he wouldn’t have been able to do it).
"If a damsel that is a virgin be betrothed unto an husband, and a man find her in the city, and lie with her; then ye shall bring them both out unto the gate of that city, and ye shall stone them with stones that they die; the damsel, because she cried not, being in the city; and the man, because he hath humbled his neighbour’s wife: so thou shalt put away evil from among you."
To me that reads the opposite way: she should be stoned only if it isn’t rape.
Anyway, the answer you are looking for is Judaism, right?
The first google result gives the much simpler:
23 If a man happens to meet in a town a virgin pledged to be married and he sleeps with her, 24 you shall take both of them to the gate of that town and stone them to death—the girl because she was in a town and did not scream for help, and the man because he violated another man’s wife. You must purge the evil from among you.
PC – Judaism or Christianity work just fine. And the OT’s wording doesn’t distinguish between rape and consensual sex – "lie with" means either. Matt’s one is clearer, admittedly, but I like the KJV.
See here.
The virginity of the betrothed is the possession of the future husband. The bloke’s being killed or theft of valuable property and she for, as is said, not resisting.
Clearly it’s making exactly that distinction in talking about whether or not she cries out for help, John. Why are you continuing to pretend otherwise? Even that Lego Bible story site recognises this.
So she’d be executed for being considerate? People have jobs to go to you know – the last thing they want is to be woken up at all hours by people screaming and shouting.
Peter: I fail to see how that makes a meaningful difference. Is it not rape if she’s terrified into silence?
Or has a hand clamped over her mouth, or a knife to her neck… Peter isn’t stupid, so one can only conclude that he is an apologist, and is being deliberately purblind.
"The virginity of the betrothed is the possession of the future husband." Is that like when Spock was betrothed to T’Pring when he was about seven and when they were due to marry and she was seeing that other bloke so Spock had to fight Kirk with those rounded spade things, and Kirk’s shirt got ripped to shreds, and McCoy pronounced him dead? Because I never understood any of that.
Dave, IIRC, the important part was the Meaningful Stuff between Kirk and Spock. And a bazillion strange fangirls will tell you the same.
John: I think that particular part of Deuteronomy is probably superceded in most Christian traditions by ‘Let he who is without sin cast the first stone’. Could be wrong though – I’m not into all that. So the answer would be Judaism.
Peter: I fail to see how that makes a meaningful difference. Is it not rape if she’s terrified into silence?
These bible writers eh? Why didn’t they include 176 sub-clauses to cover every possible eventuality. It was obvious that conveying a simple idea of non-consent with the phrase "crying-out" was going to be deliberately misunderstood 2000 years later.
It doesn’t say "she’ll be stoned unless she cries out", it says "she’ll be stoned if the guy fucks her, and she deserves it cos she didn’t cry out".
It’s ambiguous, but the sane interpretation is "she’ll be stoned if the guy fucks her, and she deserves it cos she didn’t cry out enough" rather than "she’ll be stoned if the guy fucks her, unless she actually cried out and nobody heard her, because obviously our religious courts will believe that".
No. A sane reading of the KJB version is that she gets punished for adultery both before and after marriage
22:22 If a man be found lying with a woman married to an husband, then they shall both of them die, both the man that lay with the woman, and the woman: so shalt thou put away evil from Israel. If a man be found lying with a woman married to a husband, then they shall both of them die.
eg. Married case
22:23 If a damsel that is a virgin be betrothed unto an husband, and a man find her in the city, and lie with her
22:24 Then ye shall bring them both out unto the gate of that city, and ye shall stone them with stones that they die; the damsel, because she cried not, being in the city; and the man, because he hath humbled his neighbour’s wife: so thou shalt put away evil from among you.
eg. She was engaged to be married
22:25 But if a man find a betrothed damsel in the field, and the man force her, and lie with her: then the man only that lay with her shall die.
eg. if he forces her, she gets off.
I’m a atheist, but I have to say, your case here is quite a stretch of the text.
Why didn’t they include 176 sub-clauses to cover every possible eventuality.
Given that it was allegedly inspired by an omniscient God and contains prophecies of the future, and given the way various fundies like to play the context game when it suits them and the "everything is literally true" game when it suits them, it might have been an idea, yes. Under the circumstances, I sometimes lose track of which bits I’m supposed to be interpreting literally and which bits I’m not. Just as well it ain’t my text, really.
Indeed, I’ve always wondered why an omniscient god didn’t include an appendix with cures for the common cold, a description of the circulation of the blood, an explanation of the number 0 (hello 1 BC to 1 AD!) and a decent counting system (Roman numerals, I ask you), Mendelian genetics, and at least one testable prophecy (like the antichrist will come, see the first candidate here and he will blight the earth). Then you know, I might have faith.
Yeah, yeah, very good.
Now tell me where in the world Jews put this into practice?
Unless it’s those Jews in Saudi Arabia. Or Pakistan. Or Iran.
Wait a minute…
Tony Blair is a ‘lightwieght contender for the title of Antichrist’.
He looks bigger on telly.
Hang on, OP, you spend all your fucking time over at Harry’s Place arguing that it doesn’t matter what Muslims actually DO, it is what is written in their holy book that matters, as any Muslim not doing everything the book suggests/commands is not a real Muslim. So, by your own absolutely cockfaced stupid reasoning, it doesn’t matter whether Jews actually stone people to death – what matters is what is written in their holy book, and as this is written in their holy book, our duty as… well, whatever the fuck you are, is to hate all Jews and make sure the evil at the core of their being (even if it is latent) never infects our society.
You are an absolute mongo.
OP: literally, Judea. However, I think you’re using ‘put’ in the present tense, in which case they don’t anymore. Even though their holy book suggests that they ought to. And even though there’s no suggestion that the relevant text has been superseded by new bits of holy book.
This would seem to cast doubt on your perspective that all true Muslims need to believe in and obey the barbaric bits of the Koran (unless you believe there are no true Jews left).
Or, indeed, what Andrew said.
Andrew, thank you for your reasoned argument.
Judaism has reformed and adapted to the present day. Islam has had no reformation at all. So the rules in the Koran and Hadith have never officially been repudiated and always, where Muslims gain power, have the potential to be implemented.
Western (Christian/Secular) countries have generally become more liberal as time has gone on. But with Islamic countries the opposite is true. Even Muslims living in Britain, with all the advantages that this tolerant, wealthy democracy confers, are often more reactionary than their parents/grandparents, who were at least grateful to be here.
It does indeed matter what Muslims believe and what Sharia law says, because, unless forcibly constrained, Muslims tend to put Sharia into practice, as they have been instructed. This is why secularism and democracy in Turkey, the only halfway tolerably Muslim country, has had to be enforced top down. This is why, with the secular dictator gone, sharia is once more breaking out in Iraq.
What the ancient Jewish laws said is quite literally irrelevant for the present day. What sharia says is all too relevant.
Once more, from the left, a ludicrous attempt at moral equivalence, which fails abysmally. However, I will eat my words, the next time I see some Jews in Golders Green stoning someone to death or putting a leper out of the camp!
Fools!
I wish we’d known all this thirty years ago – it’s clear the real threat was Islam all along, not the Soviets…
Thirty years ago Muslims living in Britain were a different breed. Having escaped their Muslim hell holes they were grateful for what Britain have to offer.
Second, third generation British Muslims take this country for granted. They don’t realise that it is because it isn’t governed by Islam or some equally oppressive totalitarian system that it is relatively free and prosperous.
So what do they want to do? Well 60% of them want sharia in the UK.
Morons.
You know, it’s funny, but I’ve lived in a majority-Muslim area all my life, and I’m still more scared of people stirring hate than I am of Muslims. I’m probably just another blinkered self-hating liberal, or something. Alternatively, maybe I’ve just actually met any Muslims in my entire life.
Oh, God, now you come to mention it, there’s one crashed out in the living room drinking beer, eating pizza and watching Scarface at the moment. OMFG WHAT IF HE’S A SUICIDE BOMBER?!?!?!?!?1111111
Ah, but as Old Peculier would be happy to point out, he’s only pretending – he’ll revert to his Proper Muslim ways and slit your throat in the blinking of an eye…
"Once more, from the left, a ludicrous attempt at moral equivalence, which fails abysmally."
No, once more, an attempt by me to demonstrate the unreason that lies at the centre of your argument.
As we see here:
"However, I will eat my words, the next time I see some Jews in Golders Green stoning someone to death or putting a leper out of the camp!"
Your argument that ‘Muslims are bad’ should not rest on the basis of some shoddy essentialist description of Islam and its practice. Rather, it should be a historically located argument that does not say that Islam is itself bad, as this argument is undermined by both the fact that other religions have similarly brutal, but unpracticed, edicts in their holy books, and the fact that many Muslims are able to live without enacting these edicts, just as most Christians and Jews are able to do. Some Muslim societies do enact these edicts at this point in history. You ought to argue that the enaction of these edicts is to be opposed by people who hold our moral and ethical commitments – which themselves are the products of our own historical situation.
But what you DO argue is simple, stupid, ahistorical hate.
Correction, Andrew. Most Muslims don’t stone people to death. NO Jews do. Big, big difference.
‘Stupid, ahistorical hate’- what an absurd expression. If Islam and the evil that attends it were safely in a historical context, like the nastiness in Judaism, ie not practised for around 2,000 years, then my attitude to Islam would be pretty neutral. Problem is, sharia is alive and well, and wanted, by some Muslims in Britain. I’d dearly love Islam to be irrelevant.