“You are subject to the government’s, or state’s law whether you are paid by them or not.”

So excommunication for breaking some Papist bullshit law is somehow a violation of the ECHR?

One of the PR points of the Soviets in Afghanistan was the improvement of the lives of women. True enough, but it doesn’t justify an invasion. It also doesn’t justify US support for Gulbadin Hekmatyar, known for throwing acid in women’s faces. And it doesn’t justify the British fucking empire. As my daddy used to say “For every complex problem there’s a simple solution: The wrong one.” This is more about your moralizing sense of superiority that women’s rights. Why don’t you go rescue Hasidic women from their hellish life. A little deprograming would do a world of good. And no way in hell should there be any sort of government outreach to those foul smelling heathen. Why don’t we just move them into their own part of the city, so they can keep to themselves, which they want to do anyway. Let see what should be the name for their new home…?

If a dispute resolution body is recognised by the state, then it needs to comply with the laws of that state.

If it operates in secret, then it can get away with doing whatever the hell it likes, and its judgements will only be called into question on the rare occasions where people who’ve been disadvantaged actually summon up the nerve to leave their community and bring a civil case.

So while your assertion about the ECHR isn’t technically wrong de jure, it’s completely wrong de facto.

This confusion just won’t go away, will it? You are subject to the government’s, or state’s law whether you are paid by them or not. If the ECHR applies, it applies to all, not just government agencies or employees. If the socially coercive acts of imams are not now subject to stricture under the provisons of the ECHR, they will not be in future. There is just one law for all of us. Long may that continue.

And the idea that psychologically priests of any stripe become more compliant when they are given greater power or prestige is frankly ludicrous. But that may not be what Seth was claiming in that stream of Rowan-Williams-class gibberish. It’s hard to tell.

Not to mention that I haven’t actually supported this system – my contribution here is to request that people consider the issue in a little more depth than “80% of muslims want to stone their wives” and “oh my god the muslims are coming!” I’m also unwilling to believe that we can rescue women from themselves, and perfetly willing to believe that not every woman’s choice has to agree with what liberal feminism wants for them. Sometimes in considering a problem it helps to consider what the people suffering from it might like to do…

And it’s more often than not the men arguing—as they are here—that “it’s no big deal”. It makes me sick to my stomach.

However many times you spell it out, it isn’t true. “Community disapproval” isn’t subject to the law of any sort, so a load of imams who rely on social shunning and pressure for their power can do what they like with that power.

Once one accepts the government shilling, however (and there are all sorts of reasons why imams would agree to this Faustian pact, not least because if they don’t, some other bearded chancer will – this is not exactly advanced game theory here), one is subject to the government’s law. This is how the state took over education and medicine, for example.

I also heartily commend SG’s post number 205.

No dear, you’re happy in your little home because you were raised in it. Every little nook and cranny brings forth memories of childhood, the motherland of geeks. The thought that someone else could not see your home as theirs is simply illogical. Not only the exactitude of your reason but the color scheme as well are perfect: the sky is the perfect shade of grey. The little shop around the corner and the leaves on the trees are in the Platonists’ ideal form. Everyone else can lump it.

I’m annoyed by faith because faith is no more or less than assumption. And to assume “makes an ass of u and me.” I know you assume that psychology plays no part in your rational imagination [an oxymoron since computers don’t imagine] but that itself is evidence enough for me to mock you as a pedant and a purblind fuck. Tell me who is the better representative of modernity in Turkey, Erdogan or the Army? Don’t assume, think!
And since we’ve reached this point of absurdity:
along with the rise of a secularizing Islam, India and China, we’re seeing a rise, a return, of the modernity of books, against the authority of the “supercrunchers” and the modernity of number. And before Misha Berube comes at me with another parody I’ll remind him that all that means is Richard Rorty with balls, two things Berube lost when he forgot to wear a cup in a peewee hockey league game when he was six.

What on earth do you think that means, you complete numpty?

It’s basic psychology you jackass. Offering a community the opportunity to codify a public response to the ECHR so that they construct their own cultural life within it. You butterfliesandfuckingwheels types make the secular technocrats at this site seem like hippies.

They are alrady subject to the ECHR. How many times does this have to be spelled out?

Making them subject to the European Convention on Human Rights would certainly appear to reduce their power.

What’s all this bollocks about ‘giving Islam room to modernise’? Historically the ‘modernization’ of religion has always and everywhere required a reduction in the power of priests. It’s also been helpful if holy texts are subject to form criticism, which makes scripturalism intellectually impossible. Sharia courts have slightly less than fuck all to do with either of these but with regards to the former, institutionalising religious practices in law is, if anything, likely to strengthen the power of priests, don’tcha think? Like a bit of modernity with your religion, do you? You need a clear separation between religion and the state. A simple yet strangely elusive truth for the geniuses on this thread.