From: ahmad@ra.cs.umb.edu (Ahmad Hashem)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.arabic
Subject: Re: Reason vs. Morals
Date: 17 Oct 92 01:35:30 GMT
Organization: University of Massachusetts at Boston

In article <1992Oct15.223806.21607@trl.oz.au> a.Faris@trl.oz.au writes:
>Alcohol is not part of human nature, But human nature would like the freedom
>to chose whether alcohol is good or bad.
..
>My original statement is primarily that Humans would like to choose. religions
>and in my opinion both Islam and Judaism tend to exert excessive pressures
>to box human nature and follow strict codes.

I do not dispute the fact that humans would like to choose.  In a research 
done on the elderly in a nursery home, it was shown that those who had 
some choice regarding their daily program, what to eat, when and how, what to 
do, when and how, did much better physically and psychologically, and even
lived longer than those who did not.  This was so even when the choice allowed
was not really genuine; i.e., something like "do you want your [say] hamburger
now or after 30 minutes?"  People just like to decide for themselves.

So much we agree on, now to the rest of the story.

People like a lot of things, my friend, many of which are mutually exclusive
when taken to their extremes.  Example: People like to be free, but they also
like to live among a warm family/group/community.  Absolute freedom does not
meet with really belonging to a community.  You give up some of your
individualism when you are a member of a community.  BALANCE is the name
of the game.  As the poster I have now on the wall in front of me says: "Live 
a balanced life--learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and 
dance and play and work everyday some."

People like to choose, no doubt about it.  Does this mean there should be no
laws?  Think about it: Laws deny many people the freedom to choose.

Just as people like to choose, they also like NOT to choose at times.  After
all, most if not all of our problems are due to bad choices.  Isn't this 
idea behind the "dread" that Kierkegaard and then Sartre talk about?  Did
not Existentialists put "choice" at the core of our problems?  

Personally, I see a balance between the need to choose and the need NOT to.
And, of couse, I see Islam accommodating BOTH.

>Women in the M.E. before Islam wore the finest cloths, perfumes, and the 
>arabic culture adores them as evident by our music and poetry.

And women in the M.E. before Islam were buried alive, were sold as property,
were deprived of any inheritance rights, etc etc.

>In Islam it is a stated fact "those that revert on their religion shall die
>by the sword".

Source please?  I've never ever heard of this "fact."

>However, my point is still valid, if a person is not used
>to seeing women covered gets those sexual erges, this is primarily because he
>is not used to it and easily catches his vision. Not every one in western
>soceity gets sexual erges when they see women around them, those who do are
>few, I cannot beleive that if a women is covered that those erges are
>eliminated.

Agree with the information you present.  Disagree with what you are trying to
infer from it.

>We in the M.E. have rape, but women cannot report them, they
>would be labled immediatly as whores and be an outcast in soceity.

Very sadly, yes.  But again, I don't think I agree with what you are trying 
to infer from this.

A. Hashem