muso,

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A legal system is indeed part of the moral code, so suggesting it's something else is just plain wrong. A Legal system decides what's good and bad, and then enforces that on all of society, punishing those who disagree/disobey.

What you really mean to say is that you seek to distill out those moral subjects you don't believe the state has a right to decide upon, and move them over into the personal domain, whereby each individual formulates his/her own personal approach to them?

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How do you define harm? There's bound to be a lot of activities that cause harm, but you can't actually perceive it directly. Perhaps it's long term harm, perhaps the harm manifests itself in indirect ways etc. When we define laws according to societal norms, we set a dangerous precedent. Because societies are often misled into accepting norms which are really quite wrong. By your definition the Nazi massacres against minorities were fine, because the societal norms in Nazi Germany permitted it to come about.

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I would have to strongly disagree here, and suggest you really haven't studied religions enough to comment on this.

Christianity for a start is a great adapter. It can mould and twist itself to compensate for almost any condition, even expunging some of it's own core tenets just to please the masses of the time.

Islam also has mechanisms for adapting, specifically the process of ijtihad.

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You've gotta be kidding? You think people can just do anything they like in their bedrooms and the society at large is completely unaffected by it? And as we can see by the Mardi Gras example, what happens in people's bedrooms rarely stays there. The fact is that many practises occur in bedrooms that do affect societies, and this will always be the case. You simply cannot seperate law and morality, they are one in the same.

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As I am a believer in theocracy, that really doesn't mean much to me, as I believe the entire state apparatus should be controlled by the laws of the Creator. Religion shouldn't just have an input, it should be the only single deciding factor in the way a state should be run.

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You sound like a rebellious teenager, what are you doing on a political forum?

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for 1350 years of Islamic rule, societal norms did not change. The laws of the Shari'ah remained the same. That doesn't mean they couldn't expand to deal with new situations, they could, but the basis by which they dealt with those new situations was exactly the same immutable concepts that were revealed by the Creator.

The fact that societal norms change, is a case against your concept of "rolling morality". If we base our morality on something that's constantly changing, then chances are our morals are going to end up pretty corrupted.

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That's a completely seperate issue. Islam always regards the age of consent to be the age of maturity, regardless of time period. When the shari'ah is re-implemented again, it will be the same, it is timeless. It is only the Western nations which have changed their attitude about this.

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Feel free to engage in that debate if you wish, I had no problem with it whatsoever. Those who tried to twist the concept were quickly silenced. All we had was one lone lunatic who insisted on continuing to mount personal attacks against the Prophet (Pbuh) and that person will find themselves ignored, as their vitriolic attacks and slanders do not warrant a reply.

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Well my intention was not to force anyhting down your throat, just to raise some issues I think you should consider i you're going to adopt such beliefs about morality

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Yes we do, and I am pleased you recognise it. A lot of people wish to ignore this fact, and delude themselves into thinking they still live in the "steak and eggs 50s" as you put it

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You might not think you do, but in reality that's what has to occur. Some kind of law/morality has to be imposed upon the nation, either it's yours or it's mine, or we all get together and decide according to the social norms, or we use an absolute standard

run out of characters..

freediver,

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Not everyone who formulates their own moral/legal code will be englightened, you must take this into account.

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This point is definitely valid, caring about others can exist without religion.

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The source. Evolving morality takes the societal norms as it's basis for formulating right and wrong. Abrogation on the other hand is from the same divine source as the original law/moral, and therefore is just as absolute as it.

Not everyone who formulates their own moral/legal code will be englightened, you must take this into account.

This isn't about a personal moral code, but a universal one.

Evolving morality takes the societal norms as it's basis for formulating right and wrong.

It doesn't have to.

Abrogation on the other hand is from the same divine source as the original law/moral, and therefore is just as absolute as it.

Sprint gave me the impression that people could change it. Does Islam consider the law fixed until the next prophet comes?

Strictly speaking respect is enshrined in law... at least in terms of respect for the law.

How so? Obeying the law and respecting it are not the same thing.

So who's to make the decision that this should be policed yet not other practises? Some people obviously believe these practises are acceptable, or they wouldn't be partaking in them.

There is a victim in pedophilia, there is not one in consensual homosexual sex between adults. There is a clear moral boundary, not a slippery slope as you imply. The boundary has it's basis in secular morality.

NorthOfNorth wrote on Jul 3^rd, 2008 at 10:47am:


I don't tend to judge people because of their outlook on life.

I've met people who have nothing but contempt for themselves and the world. I regard them as a challenge. I know one such person that I speak to regularly. He's part aboriginal, yet he's very quick to judge others and he hates everyone with a vengeance. He doesn't mind a chat from time to time though. Last week he was complaining about somebody because of what he did in his private life (I won't go into details).
I said to him "Being part, Aboriginal, you must have got a lot of sh1t from people during your life".
- "Yeah - all the time"
- "So I would have thought you would be the last person to judge other people, especially since you don't know the whole story"  

He went quiet for a while. I don't know if what I said had any effect on him, but it made him think.

I just find such people interesting. I want to know what makes them tick, and if there is anything I can do or say to help heal their malaise.

I think it goes deeper than just self-respect. It's more a question of overal mental profile, and there can be a variety of underlying causes for such an outlook on life. It could be something as simple as sleep apnoea.  Sometimes you can help people become less bitter and twisted by just talking to them and maybe help untwist them.

It comes down to brain function, and a great deal hinges on individual  locus of control.

We all know people with a mainly 'external' locus of control. They are the ones who spend all their time whingeing about one thing or another. They see themselves as victims, and often end up as victims of one or more medical conditions. They don't accept any specific criticism, not even personal criticism. Their usual retort is "You talk about me doing x ? Last week, you did y..." where x and y are totally unrelated. They tend to have a black and white sense of morality too. People are either good or they're evil. It's called external locus of control because they see the controlling factors in their lives as being mainly outside their control, and in fact they are comfortable with that to the extent that they feel threatened if you suggest that there are aspects of their lives that they can have some control over.  
E-loc's are severely disadvantaged in life because they are much more likely to suffer from a wide range of medical conditions, including cardiovascular disease, cancers and other conditions.

Then we come to I-locs. It's simplistic to say that you're either one or the other, because we all fall into both roles at various times. The main thing is exactly where our locus of control falls on average.

I-locs are a bit more straightforward to deal with. They assume control for their lives and generally ignore, or where possible try to influence those aspects of their lives that are outside their control.

Why lose sleep over it if an issue is beyond your control. The answer is in a simple question - What can I do to mitigate or eliminate this issue?

So if you want to get closer to my own ideas on morality, you'll need to get into the functions of a particular body organ (actually the principal sex organ) and how we use it. We all have one, and some are bigger than others. Can I say the word hypothalamus on here? Broadly speaking the main sex organ is the brain.

A lot of our attitudes on morality come down to how we use the brain, and particular the hypothalamus and how we allocate data and program our memory.

In summary, I prefer not to judge a person because of his attitudes. I prefer to understand why he has those attitudes.

Both are considered illegal practises and are capital offenses under Islamic law.

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I believe in Islam, so no I don't support different standards. However, since we do not live under an Islamic government, we must live by different laws. The two should not be confused. Islam prohibits vigilantism, and we definitely do not condone attempting to clandestinely implement our law in a non-Islamic state. This is a matter that is often confused and misconstrued in the media.

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The Qur'an does not detail every little thing. It is an exposition of all things, but not in minute detail. The Sunnah, collections of recorded speech and eyewitness reocrds of Muhammad's (Pbuh) actions is by far the larger source of material to be used in Islamic jurisprudence.

As I mentioned previously, in case a specific matter is not detailed in the Qur'an or Sunnah, then we have the process of ijtihad to determine it.