Muslim parents seek removal of gay teacher

Original post by Guru Jason

As opposed to the, "listen to god with no critical thinking or burn in hell" approach to moral policy.

I rather go for the secular version or moral policy thanks.

PS all morals are subjective as there all man made. It's only through empathy and scientific discovery do we discover what is harmful to us in what we should and shouldn't do.

It is precisely through critical thinking that one concludes that submitting to the All Knowing, All Wise would provide a basis for objective morality, thus always trumping subjective morals. The only additional area for critical thinking is assertaining whether such a God exists or not (which is a seperate topic).
On the other hand, most irreligious people lack critical thinking when they adopt their subjective moral system, instead just making arbitrary assertions not grounded in reality. For example, you cannot justify why homosexuality should be taught to kids in the first place without appealing to arbitrarily accepted concepts like secular humanism, the harm principle, hedonism, evolved morals etc, which are not grounded in objective reality - it only exists in our heads because we thought of it. These concepts can act as a foundation with which you can attempt to derive a moral code, but they inevitably conflict with each other, resulting in another arbitrary assertion of parameters to cut off reaching the logical conclusion of any one model. So for example, hedonism is the seeking of pleasure, so if everyone was allowed to seek pleasure in an unrestricted manner, then people would be able to fond pleasure in killing and theft; the harm principle limits our actions to those which cause minimum harm, but minimum harm to who? Society? The individual? Nature? What are the parameters of the social contract each individual has with society? Could the harm principle justify genocide if it was to reduce harm to humanity as a whole or nature? Are actions restricted based on their immediate harm or their potential harm in the future - what are the limits? There is so much more to go into but you get the point - it is just assertion after assertion based on what one blindly thinks is 'best' without it being grounded in anything real.
Going back to objective morality, for the theist, he may not be able to articulate the wisdom behind every moral issue, but it doesn't matter if he knows or not - his actions are grounded on the reality that he will either be punished or rewarded for eternity based on how he lived, so what would it matter if these morals conflicted with any of these concepts mentioned above?

You last statement means nothing or very little - it adds nothing to the discussion. Even with scientific discovery, social studies, etc, things are still considered legal or acceptable in spite of the harms e.g. alcohol, and (eventually) weed, and so on. Humanity is not a good source for its own rule of law and moral code.

Reply 23

Original post by Good bloke

Move abroad. That way we all benefit. You get to live in the seventh century and we avoid the risk of accommodating someone who doesn't want to integrate and be a part of the twenty-first century.

You almost make me want to stay to try to guide your future children (by the permission of God), but I have to look after myself and my future kids first, sadly.

A point worth noting is that you have a very neo-colonial Western-centric understanding of "21st Century" which you ought to reflect on and unpackage because it is bigotted to assert it when it is not based on reality. In the 21st Century there is a plathora of different communities making up the 7 billion + population of the world; the West is just one part of it, and you do not own the "21st Century" just because the part of the world you live in has a good global standing due to global wealth (re)distribution and technological advancement. To band it around like it gives you moral credulity is a farce and just a repackaged form of the Victorian anthropoligist mindset where the "white man" has come to educate the "savages".

Reply 24

Original post by Violet Femme

The problem with religious conservatives homeschooling their children is the children are not exposed to ideas that challenges the bigotry of their parents. So they end up just as hateful and intolerant.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/apr/11/british-muslims-strong-sense-of-belonging-poll-homosexuality-sharia-law

Although I would fully suppport your decision to leave this country.

Your understanding of bigotry and ours will differ. You will call us bigoted for sticking to a position with greater epistemic validity (objective morals) whereas I would consider you asserting your subjective morals with lesser epistemic validity on a community with different moral premises as something bigoted.

Disgusting.

Original post by Blue_Cow

You want to harm your own child by raising them in an echo-chamber?

Shame on you sir, shame on you.

As a hypothetical 1930s German parent, would you send your child to a state school or would you rather homeschool your child if it was possible? Any reasonable person would homeschool the child to protect them from indoctrination. Though you will not like me comparing the West to the Nazis (and I am not implying that, but I am using them as an example so you understand the ideological disagreement between the state and yourself), you are implying that protecting your child from Nazi indoctrination is a form of indoctrination in itself which is shameful; again, any reasonable parent would protect their child from a perceived harm. You just don't consider the same things as us to be a 'harm'.

Reply 27

Good bloke

Original post by Zamestaneh

In the 21st Century there is a plathora of different communities making up the 7 billion + population of the world

True. But we only live here. The rest can do what they like in terms of beleiving superstitions and deciding on their laws and morals. Just as we expect those living here to abide by ours.

Reply 28

Blue_Cow

22

Original post by Zamestaneh

As a hypothetical 1930s German parent, would you send your child to a state school or would you rather homeschool your child if it was possible? Any reasonable person would homeschool the child to protect them from indoctrination. Though you will not like me comparing the West to the Nazis (and I am not implying that, but I am using them as an example so you understand the ideological disagreement between the state and yourself), you are implying that protecting your child from Nazi indoctrination is a form of indoctrination in itself which is shameful; again, any reasonable parent would protect their child from a perceived harm. You just don't consider the same things as us to be a 'harm'.

I don't follow. What does a genocidal racist set of political beliefs have to do with anything here?

Do you think exposing your child to a wide ranging curriculum and different beliefs/views is indoctrination?

I'd say forcing a child to follow a narrow education based on some religious scripture to be indoctrination.

Reply 29

Original post by Good bloke

True. But we only live here. The rest can do what they like in terms of beleiving superstitions and deciding on their laws and morals. Just as we expect those living here to abide by ours.

That is also true, but here in the UK, everyone has different opinions anyway - what is law and what is public opinion differ at times, and public opinion differs within itself. Granted the general trend is towards some kind of post-enlightenment liberalism in the West, but my core objection with your post was an appeal to modernity (saying 'it is the 21st Century') - and a point I forgot to mention is that modernity also does not imply superiority, just as a 23rd Century moral system facilitating human sacrifice would not intrinsically be better than '21st Century morals' by virtue of being the modern moral code at the time.

Reply 30

Original post by Blue_Cow

I don't follow. What does a genocidal racist set of political beliefs have to do with anything here?

Do you think exposing your child to a wide ranging curriculum and different beliefs/views is indoctrination?

I'd say forcing a child to follow a narrow education based on some religious scripture to be indoctrination.

I was trying to put yourself in the shoes of a Muslim with my example.

It is not 'exposing' children to different beliefs, rather it is telling them what is right and wrong and what is acceptable and unacceptable, and this amounts to indoctrination. The difference between exposure and indoctrination is like me meeting a man who snorts cocaine, but neither saying it is good or bad to snort cocaine, for example; telling me as a child that it is fine to snort cocaine is a form of indocrination.

Your last sentence proved my point - so going back to my Nazi analogy, the Nazi state considering someone keeping their child away from state school indoctination a form of indoctrination itself means little to the parent protecting their child from the perceived harm. As I said, what you and I consider to be harmful views differs.

Reply 31

jonathanjames

14

Can we get this straight, this is not Islam but crazy parents laboring under the delusion that this is actually teachings of Islam People commit sins everyday, Muslims and non Muslims alike but if you make a mistake doesn't mean your automatically kicked out of Islam, and of you are a non Muslim that sins, that doesn't mean you should be instantly distance from Muslims my friends sin all the time heck everyone sins all the time but you should focus on yourself i

Reply 32

jambojim97

Original post by generallee

I was wondering what people think the lessons are here, big picture?

TSR lefties, how does this fit into intersectionality? Do you support the religious and cultural rights of Muslims to educate their children as they see fit, and deplore Islamophobia, or the rights of a gay teacher to inculcate tolerance of homosexuality? How can the circle be squared?

Who is going to win, the school or the parents? My money is on the parents, because no pupils, no school, but what does everyone else think?

If the parents DO win, does that mean that the kids are going to grow up as homophobes? Does that mean that gay teachers won't be able to work in Muslim majority schools going forward? Is that a dismal prospect suggesting future division and conflict?

Or is this the last generation of Muslim parents who think like this, and integration into a wider society which disapproves of discrimination on the grounds of sexuality is likely to take place as the next generation grows up?

Oi, just because I'm left of centre doesn't mean I follow the cult of intersectionality.

Reply 33

Good bloke

Original post by Zamestaneh

my core objection with your post was an appeal to modernity (saying 'it is the 21st Century')

That was not my point. Modernity is of no consequence. What is relevant is currency. My point is that this century is most definitely neither the time nor the location you seem to favour (regardless of where you were born) - seventh century Arabia. You will not be turning the clock back here in Britain to mediaeval times so your only hope of attaining them is to live in a Moslem majority country.

Moraility changes over time, even in a given place (not being objective as you have been brainwashed into thinking), and your mores are by no means those of the society in which you are currently so badly out of place.

Reply 34

Good bloke

Original post by Zamestaneh

it is telling them what is right and wrong and what is acceptable and unacceptable, and this amounts to indoctrination.

The law in Britain insists on schools not discriminating against teachers on the grounds of their sexuality. That is clear and simple. Yet here you are supporting parents who want their school to do exaclty that. What kind of a lesson is that for the children? Ignore the law of the land if you do not like it just like your parents? Is that what Islam teaches?

Reply 35

Original post by Good bloke

You will not be turning the clock back here in Britain to mediaeval times so your only hope of attaining them is to live in a Moslem majority country.

Moraility changes over time, even in a given place (not being objective as you have been brainwashed into thinking), and your mores are by no means those of the society in which you are currently so badly out of place.

I see, though I still disagree. My opinion is still current since I live in the 21st Century, regardless of the origins of the opinion itself being older, though it is not the consensus opinion of wider British society. I do have the choice to go to a place with a moral code more synchratic to mine as you say, but conversely I could try to encourage others to adopt my opinion, and perhaps in time or in future generations, opinions like mine may become more popular or legislatively influential in the West.

Reply 36

Original post by Good bloke

The law in Britain insists on schools not discriminating against teachers on the grounds of their sexuality. That is clear and simple. Yet here you are supporting parents who want their school to do exaclty that. What kind of a lesson is that for the children? Ignore the law of the land if you do not like it just like your parents? Is that what Islam teaches?

In the video in the OP, they are not objecting to the teacher being gay as an intrinsic issue, rather they are objecting to the promotion of homosexuality through a program that the teacher was running - objecting to the teacher being gay is discriminitory but objecting to the program is not.

For my next point, read my post to another user regarding the difference between 'exposure' and indoctrination. As I said to them: we will differ as to what constitutes 'harmful views', so our perceptions of indoctrination will differ.

Linking both points together, declining to promote a certain viewpoint in school does not constitute discrimination but to actively promote it in school can constitite indoctrination.

Reply 37

It's****ingWOODY

20

Original post by Zamestaneh

How delightfully bigoted and xenophobic of you. This is my home country - my birth certificate is here - but if you insist on me 'going back' to the place older generations of my family came from, perhaps you could also 'go back to where you came from', and go to Germany or Scandanavia or France, presuming you are ethnically English?

Always a pleasure to engage with bigoted and self-entitled indivuals.

Sorry - was I just labelled a bigot by someone who is so intolerant of those with different beliefs to themselves, that they'd be willing to go as far as to homeschool their children so they didn't have to integrate with the "non believers"? Couldn't make it up :rofl:

The point is, you're not ethnically English, and you refuse to fully integrate into the English culture, so you should move to a country that shares your ideals. I could be totally non-English in ethnicity, yet I'm fully integrated into British culture and I'm tolerant of anyone who is equally tolerant towards others. It has nothing to do with your race or religion - there have been posters here who claim to be white British and whinge that they hate our country and I've told them to f*** off somewhere else just as quickly as I did you.

Reply 38

999tigger