A clear depiction of Islamist extremism currently seen in several countries...
A clear depiction of Islamist extremism currently seen in several countries...
...but uses Christianity to be pc.
True.
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MovieChat Forums > The Handmaid's Tale (2017) Discussion > A clear depiction of Islamist extremism ...
Islam is right about women.
shareWait until the US pulls out of Afghanistan and the Telleban take over. The Handmaids Tale will seem tame.
shareeverywhere islam takes over, women and girls lose..........
check out Iran in the 70's
https://youtu.be/VL3iY38eInA
😲
Iranian women before & after 1979
https://youtu.be/BNdZso7ek2s
So very true.
shareIran was a muslim country in the 70's too. What does 'everywhere Islam takes over' even mean?
shareYes, Iran was a Muslim country before 1979, but it was a West-oriented, country with a secular government. Then, in 1979, the Ayatollah Khomeini took over and turned Iran into a theocracy, where he, and other Islamic clerics ran the government according to their ideas of how an explicitly religious, Islamic state should be run.
There's a big difference there.
Not sure what your point is here. My reply was to Tom8's comment about 'everywhere Islam takes over'. The important sentence in your post is 'according to their ideas'. Iran wasn't taken over by 'Islam' as such - only by a particular bunch of men using the language and symbols of Islam and interpreting them how they see fit (which is adaptable to different circumstances). My point is that there's no definitive 'Islamic' way to run a government.
My point -- which I thought was pretty obvious -- was that there are, or were, some relatively secularized Muslim countries, where those societies had made significant strides toward equality of the sexes. This they did in spite of Islam, because that sort of gender equality is directly counter to what Muhammad wrote down in the Koran. This was a sign that these countries were experiencing a decline in the religiosity of its people, and certainly of its rulers.
But any time an Islamic country sees more the more religious members in its Islamic society achieve power, these religious Muslims invariably use that power to restrict the rights of women, because that's what their faith teaches them to do. They do it with the serene assurance that they are carrying out the will of God.
There’s no single, authentic, Islamic reading of the Koran or Hadith or anything, there are multiple interpretations available. The extreme ones (who grab the headlines): Taliban, Iranian regime etc are not necessarily ‘more religious’ or ‘more devout’ than the people they rule, for all their references to scripture and all their solemn proclamations. The development of ‘Islamic’ politics in the these forms is a 20th/21st century phenomenon, nothing to do with a rise or decline in religiosity.
The idea that government laws, foreign policy etc are simply an expression of some ‘authentic’ faith is, I’m afraid, complete nonsense. State interests and party interests, personal rivalries, power struggles etc are always more important. This is aside from the fact that there are many courageous individuals standing up for women’s rights (esp education) who draw their inspiration directly from the Islamic tradition itself: Malala Yousefzai for example.
I don't want to sound harsh but your point might seem ‘pretty obvious’ if you subscribe to a one-dimensional understanding of Islam or contemporary Middle East politics. It’s the version that’s become popular in the 21st Century (post 9/11 really). It takes complex, multi-faceted issues and makes them highly simplistic. It is to religion or Middle East studies what Graham Hancock is to Ancient History.
Yes, I'm aware of the many divisions in Islam. Every religion has them. Thank you Captain Obvious. There really isn't any interpretation of the text of the Koran (or the Hadith) that can infer equality of the sexes as part of Muhammad's message, and you know this. Tell you what. Point to an Islamic country where the religious leaders have a control of, or even just a high degree of influence in the government, and where women are treated anything close to equally. Go ahead.
You know, I am reminded of what I encountered in the years after 9/11, when liberal intellectuals throughout the West explained to us endlessly that the terrorists didn't really have actual religious motivations for their attacks. The real issues behind it were economic inequality, hatred of Western imperialism, etc. etc. And never mind the numerous quotes from the same clerics and terrorist leaders explaining very baldly their explicitly religious justification for waging jihad. At best, pointing to such quotes from these men was always dismissed as being mere rhetoric for their followers to lap up (also ignoring that if the rhetoric works on them, it's because the followers really believe this stuff).
It was like beating my ahead against a wall debating some of these folks. You could quote the terrorists' own words to them, and they would simply not believe it.
The fundamental problem is that for the largely secular Western left/liberal person, traditional religion is so insignificant to them that it has almost no influence in their thinking, and because of this, deep down they just don't believe it does for anyone else either. Don't project your own worldview onto others. That's a mistake.
Climate change deniers, creationists, QAnon types, they also feel they're banging their heads against a brick wall. You're in good company. You lost me at Captain Obvious btw
shareNot something I'm going to lose sleep over. When someone condescends to explain the obvious to me, my level of respect, not to mention courtesy tends to plummet rather sharply.
And then add things like simply ignoring questions which you can't answer in a way that supports your argument, as well as the employment of fallacious arguments (in this case, the red herring: "Climate change deniers, creationists, QAnon types"), and that only detracts still further.
The book came out long before the onset of the current socio-political climate.
The book was inspired by a few things happening in the real world, one of them being the GOP bending over backward to appeal to right wing conservative christian bible-belt types which was the key to Reagan's election in 1980, and the sharp rise of conservative christian influence in the wake of that.
shareNothing to do with being PC. It had to do with where the story was set. Which is the US. Also her target audience.
Gilead was based on the puritan settlers and also on the Islamic revolution in Iran in 1978-79 that saw a theocracy established that drastically reduced the rights of women and imposed a strict dress code on Iranian women. So you are correct that there is a depiction of Islam, but that's just scratching the surface of her inspirations. She has said that everything that happened in the novel was based on something that had already happened.
I don't think it's correct to say that it's a depiction of Islam as such. In the case of the Iranian revolution it's more a depiction of an authoritarian post-revolutionary regime which uses the language and symbols of Islam. The girls who are protesting against the regime right now are protesting against authoritarianism, they are nearly all muslims themselves.
shareI don't think that it's a depiction of Islam. I don't think it's a depiction of any one religion. I think that it is bits and pieces of different religions, and actual things that have happened within those different religions, then stitched together in this fictional world.
shareThat's because the dried out old scag that wrote the books is an atheist and a bitch.
shareWhat is wrong with atheists?
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