dialamah

I'm not American, so it's weird you would say that. I do rely on people who're experts in their field over less mainstream (aka fringe) sources for many of my views, so if that's 'leftist', ok. ???? Talking about well known social factors in the increase in obesity is condescending and hypocritical? You'd rather just shame parents?

Honestly, this made me laugh so hard - we are already taking a 'needless hit on our economy', trying to deal with the early effects of climate change such as flooding and fire because we paid little attention years ago when scientists first voiced their concern. And it's only going to get worse. It's going to cost trillions, our options are between bad and devastating, at this point.

The religion you are referring to does not force women to wear anything, marry at 9, inherit less than half .... etc. Those are all choices made by some of the people who practice the religion. For example, my Muslim sister owns the apartment she bought in Alexandria outright; her husband's name is not on it. She can will it to whomever she wants - even if it leaves him on the street, and if they divorce he gets none of it unless she chooses otherwise. My sister's stepdaughter is in her mid-20s, still not married. My sister is the only wife, not one of her husband's 4 brothers have more than one wife, and all of the daughters have graduated university before marriage for them has been considered. Your question would seek to exclude them, based only on the fact that they're Muslim, even though they'd fit very well with your 'cultural values'. Just like Christians, Muslims come in many different flavors and practices; your suggestion that asking someone if they follow a certain religion as a way of determining if they'd be a cultural fit for Canada is extremely discriminatory.

Nobody shoots anyone till the first time they do. The fewer guns that are in circulation and the harder they are to get, legally or illegally,, the harder it will be for anyone to become a first-time shooter.

Do you consider yourself "conservative", and in favor of "smaller government" and "less government interference"? If so, why would you support a law that will cost money to implement and isn't even needed? Even if you aren't a conservative, why would you support implementing a useless law? But hey, you guys can go ahead and assume women are murderers and need more 'laws' to control them, I don't care. Thank goodness for our liberal, progressive and feminist government; you religious fanatics can go suck rocks.

Late term abortions are almost non-existent. Serial killers are not.

It's a non-existent problem. Why make a law to address a problem that doesn't exist? Late-term abortions, on the extremely rare occasions they happen, are because the baby is already dead or will not survive being born by more than a few minutes. Anyway, if any of you had read Rue's links, you'd realize that women in Canada who want abortions after 24 weeks often have to go to the States because most of our medical institutions will not do them past the second trimester.

People who suggest women having nearly full-term abortions are doing so for no better reason than they changed their mind about having a baby at 6 or 7 or 8 or 9 months along. It's a ridiculous assumption and anyone who thinks that clearly has no regard or respect for women generally.

There was an attempt to set up similar tribunals in Ontario, but McGuinty (I think) said no. As a side effect there were similar Jewish/Catholic tribunals that were disallowed. I'm ok with that, but I suspect that they'll continue informally anyway. People who believe will put their religion above man's law, especially when it comes to personal decisions.

How would you prevent it? People do what they do, often regardless of laws. They do things against their own best interests as a result of peer and family pressure, religious belief and even because they're in love. Oppressive regimes can probably do better than freer countries in terms of imposing "acceptable" behaviors, but even they get rebels and nonconformists.

Fortumately for women living in the UK (and other Western countries), any social pressure brought to bear can be at least somewhat offset by the knowledge that they have options.

So, a woman is going to endure 9 months of pregnancy, only to decide at the last possible moment "No"? Seems exceedingly unlikely, as in never gonna happen. In fact, its a pretty misogynistic idea that women are interested in having healthy and viable fetuses aborted within a few weeks of their due date. Maybe do some research on why women have abortions, and when, before making stupidly misogynistic posts that essentially accuse women (and their doctors) of being casual murderers.

Used to be upwards of 90% of Egyptians believed FGM was a religious requirement (Coptic Christians and other non-Muslims included). Its good to see that education and laws are having seen effect.

Stoning is a method of execution during which a group of people, usually peers of the guilty party, throws stones at the condemned person until he or she dies. Death by stoning was prescribed in the Old Testament Law as a punishment for various sins. Both animals and people could be the subjects of stoning (Exodus 21:28), and stoning seems to have been associated with sins that caused irreparable damage to the spiritual or ceremonial purity of a person or an animal.Some sins that resulted in stoning in the Old Testament were murder (Leviticus 24:17), idolatry (Deuteronomy 17:2–5), approaching near to Mount Sinai while the presence of God was there (Exodus 19:12–13), practicing necromancy or the occult (Leviticus 20:27), and blaspheming the name of the Lord (Leviticus 24:16). Stoning was probably the punishment for various types of sexual sin, as well (Deuteronomy 22:24); the related passages in Leviticus 20 do not specify the method of execution, only that the guilty party was to be “put to death.” The Torah and Talmud also prescribed death by stoning; the Koran never did, but nontheless, Muslims picked it up from the Christians and Jews in their region. Anyway, your ignorance about religion is profound. No religion is free from supporting barbarity to maintain its power; Christianity isn't "better than Islam" because it's Christianity, but because in Western countries, education and scientific knowledge has reduced peoples reliance on some sky fairy to tell them the "rules". If your goal in discussing Islam/Muslims was to really determine why their regimes tend to be so harsh and discuss ways to perhaps help them leave those practices behind, we'd be having a different conversation. But your "conversation" goes like this: "Here's a news story about a Muslim person behaving badly! Muslims behave like this because Islam." If I (or anyone) points out that most Muslims don't do the behavior featured in your news story, you react with scorn and name-calling and declare that such people are a small minority. You use pictures of dark-skinned men to "prove" the criminality of millions of people not associated with those men - other than the assumptions that exist in your head. You use a study to "prove" that 2nd generation Muslims are becoming more fanatical (read anti-Western and dangerous) because they attend Misque more, and reject the parts of the same study, and any other study, that demonstrates just the opposite - 2nd generation Muslims (and all immigrants) become more compatible with Western values. You collect all this "ammunition" to push the idea that only or primarily "white European" types should be allowed to immigrate to Canada and fan fears of cultural annihilation and harm to "White women" to support that argument. Your white nationalist agenda is as clear as Taxme's, though somewhat more coherent. Being called an apologist by folks like you is about the same as being called a "race traiter" by the neighbor who had to sell and move because the court deemed his speech an overt threat to his brown neighbors.

I've always agreed that Islam supports patriarcy and patriarchy is misogynistic. Same for Christianity, and in fact, studies have demonstrated that there are higher rates of domestic and sexual violence among Christian families than the general population. (Coupla links below.) And the more fundamentalist and closed a sect is, the more prevalent is sexual and physical abuse of women and girls. However, domestic and sexual abuse is more complicated than "religion". Income levels, education and cultural practices all have an impact. Distilling it down to "Muslims are violently misigynistic because Islam" is far too simplistic. The New Years attacks in Germany have not been repeated, so perhaps there was something else going on there. Your other claims are derived from sensationalist, biased media sources and are not supported by factual, unbiased and objective studies and reports. I won't bother repeating the links to those reports and studies because you'll dismiss them as a conspiracy to keep us in the dark about "the Muslim threat." Link 1. Link 2.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002_Mecca_girls'_school_fire Fifteen girls died; some people claimed that the Mutaween wouldn't let girls out or pushed them back into the building because they weren't appropriately covered. An inquiry was held, and while the inquiry didn't agree with the claims that the Mutaween prevented girls from leaving the building, it did find that the religious authority who ran the school were negligent. As a result of the criticism, girls' schools were removed from the special authority they were under, and were put under the same authority as boys schools. The part of this story that will escape Goddess' notice is that the actions of the religious police in preventing the girls from leaving was condemned by Muslims. Instead, in her mind, these are the ones who are representative of all Muslims - the thousands who objected to such extremism are not.

Are you trying to say that people don't have relationships with 'acquaintances'? That a father doesn't have a relationship to his daughter, a mother to her son, an uncle or aunt to their niece and nephew, friends don't have relationships with friends? So are you limiting the word 'relationship' to mean only a marriage-like relationship, and all other ..... interpersonal connections to some other word? Such as? So, claiming I posted something entirely different than what I actually posted is the same, in your mind, as disagreeing about what 'relationship rape' means?

I very specifically noted that the "consequences" for rape are different between Islamic/third world countries when I said this: I agree that women in Canada/US/etc are more likely to get a fair hearing and their rapist punished than women in Islamic (or any third world) countries Why do you lie about what I post?

Some people on this thread are essentially claiming that Muslims are rapists and are using questionnable sources, sensationalist media stories and flawed logic to support their claim. That's the bigotry. Challenging questionnable sources, sensationalized media stories and flawed logic is not the same as saying its ok for Muslims to rape. Rape is a crime in Islam and in Islamic countries - so nobody thinks rape is ok. Issues around the enforcing of laws, believing women, catching rapists and who rapes and why are universal. Debate around whats rape and what isn't is ongoing, even in Western countries. I agree that women in Canada/US/etc are more likely to get a fair hearing and their rapist punished than women in Islamic (or any third world) countries, but there's no guarantee even here that it will happen. Claiming that Muslim men are so much likely to rape than non-Muslims and that Western women are at increased risk from Muslim men is no different than the Nazi's claiming that Jews would rape German girls or Americans claiming that Blacks would rape White girls. Its just propaganda.

Nobody here gives Islam a pass for rape and misogyny; that's just a strawman thrown up by bigots when they are called out on their bigotry.

Statista says there were 54,000 rapes reported in the UK/Wales in 2018 to 2019. You claim most of these were "stranger rapes"; where is your proof? Implying that these "stranger rapes" were carried out by "Pakistani rape gangs" needs more proof. Especially since grooming girls may also include raping them, they'd be included in the category of "acquaintance rape" and not "stranger rape". So, where is your proof? Or did you just knee-jerk a contrary opinion without thinking about it?

I assume you have statistics from a reliable source for that claim, but simply forgot to include it.

You don't know that most women and children are sexually assaulted/raped by people they know, including family members? Stranger rape is less common, though not rare. I'm honestly surprised that you wouldn't know this. 8 out of 10 victims know their rapists.

Why would you assume that because she's Muslim, it would be wrong to shake her hand? Why made you think she was uncomfortable? My neighbor wears an hijab because her husband likes her to. I asked her one day how strict he was about other things and she said .. "not strict at all, I can shake hands with men, talk to them, its ok. It's just the hijab he likes". My partner has been over on a couple ocassions when her fire alarm malfunctioned when her husband wasn't home. Other than putting a scarf over her hair, she was perfectly comfortable, and her husband didn't bat an eye when he got home and my partner was still there.

Some places lack real grocery stores within walking distance of a community and people in that community don't have money for busses, or gas or cars. There are, however convenience stores and fast food places nearby, so thats their food source. People can actually be simultaneously obese and malnourished. Creators of processed and convenience foods do tons of research to find out what will make the brain hooked on their food - needs just the right amount of fat, sugar and salt, crunchiness or meltiness. Real science, actual addiction. Certainly in many cases people do know better, and could do better. But its not the only factor that is contributing to the rise in obesity in Western countries.