16 thoughts on “These Boots Were Made For Walkin’

    • I swan, Mr Spahn, the things you come up with. I went to the first link and after reading about the dire consequences for letting the hem of one’s garments drag on the ground – oh my! – I noticed “new fatwahs” on the sidebar. I love to read fatwahs. From the long list I selected this one:

      What should a person do if he memorised some of the Qur’an then forgot it?

      What indeed?? According to Islam, begging Allah for mercy is a non-starter -thus the need for ulama (clerics) who can divine a way out of whatever picayune moral dilemma the Believer faces. Thus one can picture a sad choral rendition of “Sam, You Made the Pants Too Long” – perhaps as rendered by Red Buttons, here (part of a eulogy for Milton Berle)

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYD1f5wyUOk

      The level of moral maturity in Islam is shockingly low. To see how primitive is Islamic moral development vis-a-vis Western psychological theory – e.g., Kohlberg’s stages, see this:

      http://www.qcc.cuny.edu/SocialSciences/ppecorino/INTRO_TEXT/Chapter%208%20Ethics/Reading-Barger-on-Kohlberg.htm

      Koranic ‘ethics’ and moral development appears to be arrested at Level One – fear of punishment.

      Utterly sad.

      • Oh, Dymphna, we must have been “separated at birth”!

        I have NEVER, but NEVER, seen or heard anyone else use “I swan”! Thank you so very much. 🙂

        And, of course, I’ll check all my body coverings to ensure that they don’t touch the ground…. Yeah, right.

        • “I swan” is new to me, and I assumed it was a mistyping for “I swear” or something. Looking in a dictionary, the etymology and meaning are:
          swan = [[< ? Brit dial. _Is'wan_, I'll warrant]] [Dial.] to swear. Usually in the phrase "I swan!", an exclamation of surprise, impatience, etc.

          I intend to ask whyislam.org about isbaal (I signed up a few weeks ago; they said they would contact me "God willing", but haven't, so according to them, Allah is to blame for our lack of communication).

          (1) When wearing trousers, the ankles should be covered.
          (2) When wearing trousers, the ankles should be uncovered.
          It is not clear which of these alternatives is morally preferable, or why the wrong choice will send you to hell.
          I'll ask whyislam.org for the moral reasoning about isbaal,
          and whether we can be saved from hell by wearing the same kind of socks worn by the Prophet (pbuh); argyle, weren't they?

      • Thanks for posting that. I remember reading about moral development a long time ago but I needed a refresher.

        This gives me a way to better describe the difference between where I lived previously and where I live now. The previous place I lived was bothering me and I think it was because most of the people there were operating at level 2-3. Where I live now, level 5 seems to be more common.

        I can only imagine the hell I would experience if I had to live in a place where level 1 was the norm. 2-3 was bad enough.

        • Here’s a line from the Wikipedia article on Kohlberg’s stages which perfectly describes the problem that I often run into, but more frequently in my previous location:

          “Because post-conventional individuals elevate their own moral evaluation of a situation over social conventions, their behavior, especially at stage six, can be confused with that of those at the pre-conventional level.”

          Though I’m thinking of other situations, this describes the problem that dissidents run into in general.

      • I hadn’t come across Kohlberg’s stages. Thank you for providing the link. A pleasure to come across clear thinking, and to get to learn new stuff.

        • A warning about this though: one stage is not necessarily superior to the others.

          For example, the Swedish youth who came to the conclusion that incest and necrophilia ought to be just fine as long as consent was present seemed like they were trying to operate at stage 5-6. All they really did was try to extrapolate “consent” as a universal principle to be applied to everything. Therefore, in this ridiculously abstract system: 1) incest is ok as long as both parties consent, 2) necrophilia is ok as long as consent is in the dead persons will, 3) Bestiality would be wrong based on the idea that an animal is incapable of consent.

          In reality, the rational reason why moral beliefs against such things would evolve is due to survival concerns: things like disease and deformed offspring. The over application universal principles in this results in real world problems because those universal principles are just too simplistic to encompass the complexities of reality.

          Kohlberg’s stages are also rationalist and seem to assume that logical reasoning is better than intuition (which generally means making decisions based on emotion and social cognition). As described above, this is not necessarily true. In my opinion, the person in this case who just went “that’s disgusting” would be more right than someone with some argument involving application of universal principles.

  1. Is everyone ready for the ensuing riots and destruction of private property along with the whining and wailing about hurt feelings? Get your popcorn, prop up your feet and get ready to watch all the nuttiness.

  2. Incredible. It never ever cease to amaze me, how some writers manage to put Islam and morals into one article. These are truly gifted writers, fiction or otherwise.

    I am not being disrespectful to the authors of such intellectually demanding and challenging work.

    After such mind bending ‘stuff’ I think I’ll read something easy, like err… Prof. Heisenberg, quantum mechanics.

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