The dominant scholarly opinion is that such a marriage is to be avoided. The reasoning follows that in all cultures the male’s greater relative power and status in society, and his authority in the home, will over time turn the Muslim wife away from the faith, if she were to marry a Christian or a Jew. In this discussion neither party wish to follow organised religion. This being so they are not constrained to follow beliefs they do not respect or hold dear. However, it is hoped that they continue to respect the religions of their believing families.

Nevertheless, if a Muslim woman wishes to contemplate such a relationship, she must always remember that only Allah (SWT) knows best; that she should reflect on the matter as hard as she can in a dispassionate manner; then she should pray and plead for guidance from Allah (SWT); and then ultimately she must do what her conscience dictates. Blind hatred of religion and religious figures like the Prophet (PBUH) is uncalled for in this contemplation.

A particularly careful and in-depth consideration is called for. During it the partners must consciously assume the profound cultural and religious differences they will have to face, both between themselves and in relation to their respective families and the Muslim’s original environment, to which they may possibly return after a period spent abroad.

I have this idea of you rocking in a chair somewhere, perhaps on a porch.

I think you are the strongest, most sane person, I have ever encountered.

thank you for that, but i doubt that is the case! still i think its fabulous that you think so

as for rocking on that chair, i’d love to have a porch now. as it is i have to make do with sitting by the window, looking out onto the london night and police vans hooting past

Clannish- that’s a good term.

I have seen you taken to task here by a worthless piece of shit, and I am, still, angry about it.

I have this idea of you rocking in a chair somewhere, perhaps on a porch.

I think you are the strongest, most sane person, I have ever encountered.

there’s all sorts of things on the ‘rise’ and all sorts of things on the ‘wane’, and all mannner of things in between! these kinds of blanket questions are inherently simplistic and just feed the clash of civ. simplistic thesis – in the end, so much of it is a self-fulfilling, self-fancying – prophecy.

I agree. But there you go. What do you or I count against the certainty of the simplisitic.

I have been becoming increasingly fractious, which is an entirely self destructive strategy, against the forces of lunacy we sometimes see here.

It is me who becomes the ’self-important’ white guy, anti Libertarian nutter. Or you that is the baby Moses in a fucking basket, cast out on the Nile.

The allegations are flung from a pool of self certainty that, were it not for it’s chutzpah, you be recognised as toxic.

But, apparently, they can harm, whoever they like, but they must not be attacked back?

It does not matter whether it is fathers convincing their daughters – note daughters – of the benefits of chastity rings as the new ‘voodoo’ against sex, or idiotic fuckers like Ashik measuring you up for a chastity belt. Or folk seeing women as inferior, by their very nature ffs, to men. Now, how self fullfilling is that? (BTW, I hate the corollary equally).

Or brain dead Palin arguing for the idea that we should ‘teach the controversy’ over evolution, when there is no arguement or debate worth entertaining.

Nor mad clergy saying that HIV can indeed pass through condoms, though their not too sure if it exists in the first place.

Nor the complete head bangers that believe that 2000BC was a documentary and lashed out $24m for a young earth creationist museuem.

It makes climate change denialists – look like the only sort of lunatics left to talk to. Err, another group of nutters.

There are thousands of other sub species of nutters, including me most probably.

Last point. I am Scottish, and I seem to recall quite a degree of tribalism out of my own culture, we tended to describe it as clannish.

A particular outbreak of this stupidity left the Campbells and the McDonalds at loggerheads for centuries. Google it, it was all over the Battle of Glencoe, which was pretty horrific. There is nothing new about hatred in this world. Still, time does indeed heal, and they even marry each other and have completely forgotten that bloody history. Which is better than keeping it going, forever and a day, as some here would like to do.

But I have seen you taken to task here by a worthless piece of shit, and I am, still, angry about that.

Respect to you and yours.

ashik should definitely start his own blog. it would be most interesting.

166-amrit, i agree..so true. the most entertaining and revealing of PP threads has ALWAYS been when the discussion goes off-thread, and gets controversial. without it, PP would be boring. I guess the less subversive types don’t enjoy it. but they can go hang out on another thread, can’t they, like the ones with about 5 or 20 comments, and be polite and stick to the thread, whatever that is) I always feel i learn more from the feisty threads, but that’s me.

depends on what people mean by secularism! as i’ve already pointed out, different people mean different things by it. there’s no one ‘mass of people’ around the world with one sort of thinking, much though the media might like us to think it. there’s all sorts of things on the ‘rise’ and all sorts of things on the ‘wane’, and all mannner of things in between! these kinds of blanket questions are inherently simplistic and just feed the clash of civ. simplistic thesis – in the end, so much of it is a self-fulfilling, self-fancying – prophecy. of course i suppose a lot of journalism does, but hey, i guess people have to write about something and pose high-school-ish sort of ‘debate’ questions. i wish we could get away from that but i guess not – look at Parliament – its such a parody of a high-school debate, it really hasn’t moved on.

I think while it may be contradictory — I think both would get resounding yes in my book. But you know what I could be very well wrong in my interpretation on the nature of the post itself.

and then

“What could this sudden rise mean? ….The most likely explanation might be simpler: more people hating religion in general.”

I totally do not get the explanation. Not at all. Am I missing a crucial logic connection that impedes my failure to understand how a rise in anti-semiticism and Islamophobia means people are hating religion more?

No way, not in my opinion. Religion is still kicking and alive as well.

Refer to posts #114 and #116.

And I am not stalking him.

[...]

[just a little bit].

I’m confused… What’s with your sudden stalking of Rumbold?

You are wrong about that; Sunny is not my type. For right now, you are the only one.

If you write a post on supporting UK intervention in other countries, or remind me that you once supported the war in Iraq, I might stop liking you.

And tell me that you wear tweed. That’ll really undo my obsession with you. But if you so much as insinuate wearing any type of uniform, you have me hooked on you.

For life.