But since there is so much immorality, each man should have his own wife, and each woman her own husband.

- for each woman to have her won husband, you have to exclude polygamy, otherwise women have to share husbands. There is no ambiguity in this line. It means two people to a marriage.

Also, as members of Australian society, don't Muslims have a right to lobby for reognition under the law for such things? Isn't this what a free and democratic society is all about?

Sure.

There's only 1 country in the world that I know of where women are required by law to cover up

There are plenty of ways to force women to cover up. Making it a legal requirement is only one. A far easier way is to punish them for being raped or make them feel that it is inevitable when they reveal themselbves in any way, and make men see scantily clad women as the problem, rather than their own inability to control themselves. When that happens, they will be scared to set foot in the street.

Can you provide some evidence or documentation about this? I've never read anything about the pre-Victorian hedonism of the British.

Hedonism and nudity are not the same thing. Nudity and sex are not the same thing. Nudity and sexualisation are not the same thing.

Without women and the appeal of their nakedness or semi-nakedness, there'd be no advertising industry, and I think you know that, you just don't want to admit it.

Crap.

By your reasoning, the fashion industry should be booming in the Muslim countries, as there's less nudity and more clothes...

You are the one making ti all about the fashion industry. If it's a choice between a fashion industry and abuse of women, I choose the fashion industry. One thing that is booming in Muslim countries is the abuse and oppression of women.

This is a false argument, since Islam doesn't claim women should only cover when weather conditions dictate it.

No it is not a false argument. It is my point. Women should be allowed to wear whatever is comfortable according to the conditions. Yes our early settlers did not do this, and we laugh at them for causing themselves such discomfort. We are not going to go back to forcing women to wear tents.

Islam has a certain level of public decency for men and women all year 'round

LOL, totally covered except for hands and face is not a 'certain level'. It is draconian.

But the facts tend to indicate that societies where sexual imagery is flooded into people's minds tend to have the least respect for women.

Crap. Tell me what countries stone women as punishment for being raped? Forcing a woman to cover up is not respect. It is a form of protection against the disrespect in the society. Respecting women and protecting them against disrespect, at their own cost, are not the same thing.

Slang for Christian. Like xmas. I annoys me too. Save it for the text messages, I reckon.

sprint,

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Does this mean I  said something that warranted being banned? But out of your infinite graciousness, I am to be spared? Thank you oh so much

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Ok, since you're so intent on quoting these verses, I'm going to assume you've read them quite thoroughly, and perhaps even checked their actual meanings in the original Greek? As we know only too well that the English translation is often very biased towards the time period in which it was done.

Now in this verse, the word translated as "his own" and "her own" is actually two different words in Greek, and neither of them carry the meaning of "exclusive ownership". They are simply possessive pronouns "his" her" theirs" etc. So the possessive pronoun in English should be quite sufficient to represent them. As when you couple the English possessive pronoun with the word "own" it's an attempt to strengthen that possession, which just isn't in the original Greek text.

Just to give you a few examples:

"For ye have the poor always with you; but me ye have not always." (Matthew 26:11)

The world "you" here is the same as the word "his own" in the verse you quoted (Greek: ἑαυτοῦ). Do you think this really means "For ye have the poor always with you and only you"? I've cross referenced quite a lot of verses with the exact same Greek word in them, and I couldn't find a single case of it carrying a meaning of exclusive ownership.

"And he entered into a ship, and passed over, and came into his own city." (Matthew 9:1)

Now in this case, the other word is used (Greek: ἴδιος). Do you think the city is possessed by just one man (in this case Jesus I think)?? Does this word indicate exclusive ownership? I don't think so.

So I don't think those verses are as clear cut as you might like to think. They do not specifically mention exclusive ownership of one spouse over the other. They simply mention that each man should possess a wife (without specifying quantity) in order to prevent lewd sexual behaviour, and this was in response to someone asking whether men should remain celibate.

abu - you STILL have not answered your false query I answered about polygamy and the NT.

feel free to have enough guts to complete it.

Or can NO muslims say they are wrong ??

unable to admit you are wrong ? No muslim can.

the concordance I have goes back to original root greek, aramaic and heberew words.

but, you would disagree with them all, unless they agreed with mohammad the paed.

freediver,

Please read the examples I provided properly.

Especially the one where the same word is used to refer to someone speaking about "his own" city. Yes possession is expressed through this word, but not exclusive possession, all the other 100,000 other souls who live in the city also possess it. Just as other wives can possess the same husband. The grammar used in this passage is completely in line with the concept of polygamy, and does not rule it out at all.

Also the fact that the word used for wife can be understood as wife or wives. In fact in about 120 odd occurences of this word in the NT, it refers to wives (plural) whilst only about 95 cases of it refer to wie (singular).

Sprintcyclist wrote on Jul 2^nd, 2008 at 11:38pm:


Do yourself a favour