Good News Sunday: Gay Friendly, Woman Led Mosque Opens

[Safe_Bet]

I'll be damned! A whole flock of pigs just flew by! I guess there might be hope for the world after all!

"We are gender equal, queer-friendly and religiously nondiscriminatory," Zonneveld declared. "In other words, all are welcome. Allah tells us in the Quran that the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, was a 'mercy to the worlds.'".

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mobil...gay-friendly-women-led-mosques_n_1368460.html

 

[lexy8]

Fantastic!

 

[EMPRESSLAINIE]

Funny that....he also said KILL ALL UNBELIEVERS. Uh I think one of the Pope's also said that in the middle ages.

 

[njlauren]

There is always hope, though it isn't mentioned much, there are forces at work in the Islamic community to break away from the past and to move forward. It is sort of ironic that the Muslim world at one time was relatively progressive when Europe was mired in the stupidity of the dark ages (the Medieval church wasn't exactly that far removed from fundamentalist Islam is today), and we shouldn't be all that sneering when we have so many Christian fundamentalists in this country who are being allowed to define legal rights for GLBT people based on their beliefs, which aren't exactly all that different then those running the show in Iran *shrug*. I have known gay muslims, and they said that a lot of Imans of mosques in the US are a lot more open and friendly, if quiet about it, much as there are churches within relatively conservative Christian churches (like, for example, the Methodist church in Philadelphia that kept their minister, an open gay woman in a relationship, as their non ordained pastor, paying her, because the old farts in the central group took away her ordination, or the not so few Catholic churches that ignore the stupidity of their Bishops and the people running the show in the vatican, and are supportive of GLBT people.

One of the things you have to keep in mind is that many of the Muslims who come to the US do so to get away from the stupidity at home, most specifically the Islamic fundamentalism that makes life for people, epecially women, so difficult. When people leave someplace to move someplace else, there is a reason for it, and a lot of the times it is to get away from things like oppression, they don't want to bring that with them. Give them a couple of generations, and they probably will reflect what most people in this country want, to be left alone to live their lives as they see fit I doubt many muslim women in the 2nd and 3rd generation would be willing to wear a Burqah or give up the right to drive or marry whom they wish, or to be forced to live at home and be a baby machine. There will be some, but like I said, given the fundamentalist Christians we have in our country right now, we can't talk about the threat of 'muslims' when we have enough to deal with in this country.(I am not talking about terrorism, I am talking of the threat that fudnamentalist religion poses on people who want to lead their own lives

 

[njlauren]

Funny that....he also said KILL ALL UNBELIEVERS. Uh I think one of the Pope's also said that in the middle ages.

Mohammed never said that, we don't know what Mohammed said or didn't say, because he never wrote anything down. The Q'ran has statements in it that define the muslim world and 'the other', for example, and there is contradiction in the Q'ran. For example, it forbids forced conversions explicitly, but yet obviously such forced conversions happened, and on one hand it talks about the brotherhood of man, and on the other talks about religious war and so forth.......

The Popes of the middle ages were not exactly loving and if you look at the record of the church in the middle ages there was often a lot more hate then love. The line you are probably referring to, though, was something that happened in the 1200's, with the first crusade that happened (I am not referring to the 'first crusdade' to take back the holy hand, as it is referred to). The first crusade was against a group of Christians living in Southern France called the Cathars (I believe they are part of the Albinginian heresy if I am not mistaken), where close to 100,000 people were killed. By all accounts the Cathars were Christian, leading simple lives, but made the mistake of a)being relatively prosperous and b) not recognizing the authority of Der Pope (and thus paying him 'tribute' taxes' as all "Christians" were supposed to do). When the battle commenced, the commander of the army asked the Bishop how to seperate the good Christians from the heretics, and the response was "kill them all, god will sort them out"...not exactly very loving, huh?