Killing a greater percentage of civilians in under six months than the US did by continuously bombing Japan for three years in WW2 with shite bomb sights, poor intel, only unguided munitions, and two atomic bombs, suggests that this goes far beyond just being an 'unclean' war.
Once again you have made assertions without doing your research.
I said “homosexual practices were accepted and commonplace in the Muslim world during the Islamic Era”
And I'm telling you that trying to argue that there was one standard from Gibraltar to the Hindu Kush over the course of hundreds of years of history is utterly divorced from reality.
Do some research, learn when the Islamic Era ended according to whichever scholarly consensus you’d like,
Do you mean the Islamic Golden Age?
then count how many years that was before the criminal punishment for homosexuality was specified in Saudi Arabia in 1928.
I don't even know how to respond to this considering the loose legal system of the Saudis and the fact that Saudi Arabia as we know it still did not exist in 1928.
And also, that’s where your haste has brought you: Saudi Arabia, not Palestine. Muhammad bin Saud’s name should have tipped you off to that. Palestine was created by carving up the Ottoman Empire, so that is the historical culture you must evaluate to make your claim, not Saudi Arabia’s.
Okay, first, the paragraph notes that it is bin Saud's endorsement of the Wahhabist movement, which dominated from Damasacus to Baghdad, which is the relevant portion. Second, the culture of the Ottomans is not particularly relevant to the culture of Palestine - the Ottoman Empire was not a nation-state, and Palestinians were sure as shit not culturally Turkish. Third, most areas outside of Anatolia had a great deal of local autonomy to administer laws and punishments, especially in accordance with Islamic law and jurisprudence.
You do know that an accurate explanation has to be correct, right?
And painstakingly? Of your three comments, only one even attempts to make an actual explanation, which is two-and-a-half lines of being incorrect about the definition of a logical fallacy you're accusing me of.
Where's the painstaking here? Where's the effort? I put more effort into each of my replies than you did in the entire chain.
Nah, I don't mind a little incivility. As far as I'm concerned, every conversation is a fresh slate unless someone says something really fucking vile, like "Genocide is good, actually."
I am well-aware of same-sex practices in the history of Islam, but the idea that there is one 'Islamic Era' with one standard used is fucking absurd. From your own source:
The 18th and 19th centuries saw the rise of Islamic fundamentalism such as Wahhabism, which came to call for stricter adherence to the Hadith.[40][41][42] In 1744, Muhammad bin Saud, the tribal ruler of the town of Diriyah, endorsed ibn Abd al-Wahhab’s mission and the two swore an oath to establish a state together run according to true Islamic principles. For the next seventy years, until the dismantlement of the first state in 1818, the Wahhabis dominated from Damascus to Baghdad. Homosexuality, which had been largely tolerated in the Ottoman Empire, also became criminalized, and those found guilty were thrown to their deaths from the top of the minarets.[40]
But sure, keep peddling misconceptions because reality is inconvenient.
Rich, considering you've went on a multi-comment rant about Iran that has nothing to do with anything anyone brought up, while I'm still discussing the point that I initially commented on - the relevance of British colonial law to homophobia in the Middle East.
You’re saying that the new laws under British colonialism are not relevant. From the article:
Yes, because, unlike the author of the piece, who can be forgiven for being a high schooler, I recognize that the laws being referenced in this case under British colonial rule were new only in wording. The Ottomans before them, as well as regional authorities in Palestine, had plenty of laws used as cudgels against the LGBT community. The British also implemented laws against stealing; that doesn't mean that the British fucking brought the idea of personal property to the Middle East.
If you look up Iran before 1950 the capital was starting to Westernize. You’re implying that the West had amazing gay rights back then when America didn’t even have Gay Marriage until 2004.
Fucking what.
Where do I imply that the West had amazing gay rights before 2004? Where do I reference the gay rights situation of the West positively at all in my argument?
Which is exactly the problem and exactly what makes it a whataboutism: rather than engage with the actual pertinent points of the article, you choose to nitpick a largely irrelevant detail in such a manner as to distract in exactly the same manner as someone trying to dismiss the whole thing based on that detail.
... that's not what a whataboutism is. A whataboutism isn't when someone gets caught up on a detail. JFC.
You have an awfully odd way showing it, then…
If someone, in the middle of an article I otherwise found anodyne and agreeable, said "Just like the British brought prosperity to Africa by building roads and hospitals", I would find myself in the comments section to dispute that shit as well. I'm not here in the comments section because the article bothered or pleased me; I agree with it, but have no urge to make a comment on the article itself. I'm here because a detail which pushes a very inaccurate and eurocentric narrative is being spread, and I would rather like it if it wasn't.
Article: [Accuses colonialism of bringing the criminalization of queerness to the Middle East]
Me: "That's literally not true"
That's not a whataboutism. That's disputing a fact. A whataboutism would be "Oh yeah? Well the Middle East was doing it too, therefore Europe's colonial homophobia was okay!" or, if you prefer, "Oh yeah? Europe was homophobic? Well, what about the Middle East's homophobia?"
I'm not saying Europe was okay. I'm not saying the Middle East was exceptionally awful. I'm not trying to justify Europe's colonial homophobia. I'm saying blame for homophobia being laid at the feet of colonizers in the Middle East is absurd. They have enough crimes to answer for without making more up.
And I'm not even addressing the main thrust of the article, which I agree with.
It's deeply frustrating that such a racist and ethnocentric view of the world dominates even supposedly leftist narratives, in which nothing has ever happened unless Europeans made it happen. To deny the agency of non-Europe originating societies to do evil is still to deny their agency.
Killing a greater percentage of civilians in under six months than the US did by continuously bombing Japan for three years in WW2 with shite bomb sights, poor intel, only unguided munitions, and two atomic bombs, suggests that this goes far beyond just being an 'unclean' war.