So if it were translated in modern government-speak the unpronounceable faux-pronoun s/he would be used? Or in colloquial politically-correct English, they as a singular pronoun? (Typical politically mandated sign in day-care centers: "After eating, everyone should wash their face.") As Isaac Asimov so eloquently put it, "In modern English, 'man' is understood as embracing woman. Yes, I know what I just said." So apparently the Koran would have come out better if Mohammed had lived in China. Chinese has no gender. Ta means he, she or it.
That's a very good point. But much like black pearls .... Anyway, has African-American reached thought-terminating cliche'? Or maybe even beyond?
S.A.M. You're barking up the wrong tree. I'm not the one that made Whori so White their skin is somewhat translucent Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! I didn't make these "fair of face" milky white skin "pointy" tit Whori (that don't poop, pee or Allah-forbid get preggers)! As I said, I didn't write this stuff. Talk to Allah. She apparently included a 15 year old's wet dream to get the more hornier and stupider of the bunch to play follow the leader with Mohammad. :shrug: It's all Chinese to me! A new Fair and Beautiful ad campaign? *TV spot* "Do you want milky fair skin like a Whore or a Hori? Drink Fair and Beautiful and you too can have pearly milky translucent-white skin just like Allah's sex Angels (ooo I mean 'Companions') in Heaven. The ones your husbands is thinking about when he closes his eyes (*back ground voice* yeah, that is what he thinks about while you do it). Milky Translucent skin is the half the reason hubby prays to Allah 10 times a day. *annoying background voice* Surveys show 3 out of 10 Hubby-prayers are: If only she'd just drink her Allah's damn Fair and Beautiful! *jingle tune* Hey Hey Hey, you're the oldest of the 4 and you ain't getting any younger or Horrier. Yum Yum Yum driiink Fair and Beautiful! *camera zoom away from sad faced 42 year old and over to happy 18 year old dancing in the sun with milky pearly translucent-White skin drinking Fair and Beautiful. She runs into the arms of fat sweaty hairy 45 year old man (slightly balding). NOTE: Fair and Beautiful may cause bleeding from eyes and anus. Never allow direct contact with skin. DO NOT EAT. Vapors may cause bleeding from nose and ears. Keep away from small children. Poison codes 19826, 82837, 188827. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
"African American" isn't any kind of cliche. Neither is "atheist," since somebody mentioned that one a few pages back. You guys do know what a cliche is, right? Because it's starting to look like you're so enamored of the term "thought-terminating cliche" that you're throwing it at every term that has any resonance here.
I suppose I wasn't thinking "African-American" as in a box to tick on a form but more as a response to a question. Like this: Manager: "Anyone keeping on eye on those kids in the store? Watch for shoplifting". Employee: Why? Manager: "what do you mean 'Why'? Because they're African American! Used like this it seems to be a thought-terminating cliche' doesn't it? I mean, Oh, OOoohhh, those Black kids. Yeah, right away I'm on it. The one looks like she had a bottle of Fair and Beautiful in her hand. Check her purse!
Ah but you did. Where does it say the pearls are white? Or the skin is? Perhaps you're caught in a thought terminating cliche yourself and see white pearls/white skin even where it does not exist.
So you say, but you think Obama could pass as white just by "identifying" with white people, in his own mind. So I don't believe there are any such people, until I see a picture of at least one. Political correctness is not behind the common use of "they" for the gender-neutral singular in many situations - almost everyone does that, and it's perfectly natural. Shakespeare did it. There's even a logic behind it - if you don't know the sex, the reference is inherently multiple. Time to revise the rules, methinks. English needs the pronoun, and already has it in use, so - - - There is no such thing as "he", or any similar gender specific word, being used generically and having no gender implications. You can tell yourself that Allah has no gender until you get blue in the face, but the repetition of the gender reference will have its effect - and it's pretty obvious in the Muslim posters around here, btw. That little insight is one of the advances brought to Western culture by its feminist component, which every Muslim culture visible on this forum is in dire need of.
I doubt it. Note that it is "western" culture which leads the world in undermining other ideologies, including feminism where women are not expected to be like men to be considered equal to them. Thats when they are not social commodities valued for their appearance.
Anyone who thinks a repetitive and authoritative male reference to dominating deity has "no meaning", is in need of basic, elementary feminist insight. That's right up there with the invisibility of the oppression made manifest in the burka and hijab, and so forth - how many times have we heard some Muslim inform us that the burka is donned voluntarily, therefore is not an oppression? Fish in water, unaware they are wet. It's one thing to admire or remain with a culture that oppresses women, systematically, for its other virtues. It's another to fail to see the oppression.
"Marginal" is hardly true these days in the USA. The Melting Pot has been boiling furiously for a long time. There are millions of Americans with ancestors of more than one ethnicity, even more than two. DNA analysis shows that despite their public animosity toward their slaves, the Southern planters were apparently quite cozy with the women in private. I get the impression that most so-called "black" Americans have 10-25% European (or other non-African) DNA. This is the reason that Africans think many of them don't look like them: they don't! I didn't know she was supposed to be "black." She could be Latina, Samoan or Burmese. Well I don't remember what the bureaucratically correct term was on this year's census form, but it was some twenty-word phrase to describe a person from Latin America (or of Latin American "ancestry," and the statistical details of that are never spelled out) who chooses not to identify himself as "white" or "Native American." My father knew Linda Ronstadt's father (but unfortunately she and I never met) and there was never the slightest intimation that his father came from Mexico. (There was a huge wave of German immigration into Mexico in the second half of the 19th century, just as there was into the USA, because Germany's economy had collapsed. That's why their music is full of accordions, tubas and polka beats.) This is something that she decided to capitalize on 25 years later. She clearly did not grow up hearing Spanish at home, her Spanish is worse than mine. You've obviously never lived in Arizona. I hope you realize how lucky you are! He was raised by his Euro-American mother! He did not live among Afro-Americans. He had to make a conscious choice to move from one community to the other. Furthermore, he lived in Hawaii, where if you're not of East Asian or Pacific Islander ancestry, you're just an outsider. I wonder what country you live in then. Or perhaps what you're telling us is that you are one of that phalanx of "strangers" who assigns people to races! I'm certainly not. One of the things that all of us slightly-too-old-to-be-hippies lament is that the younger generations of Americans seem to have rejected the progressive values we struggled so hard to establish. It came as a big slap in the face when, after once proclaiming that God was dead, they started lining up to join the Religious Redneck Retard Revival in the late 1970s. Then all the rest of the pre-1960s crap started coming back: warmongering, scientific illiteracy, two-and-a-half-minute songs, and, inevitably, racism. The only things they didn't reject were the Sexual Revolution (and I don't think it was ever supposed to trickle down to eleven-year-olds) and the Welfare State (and it only works if the vast majority of people actually go out and get jobs and don't still sleep in their parents' den when they're 30). I guess the point I keep not quite hitting is that I'm not talking about America having a Euro-American community and an Afro-American community (I hate categorizing people by the color of their skin and I've explained the reason for that many times). There is a community that is simply American, and most of us choose to belong to it regardless of our ancestry. Everyone is welcome to join us in it, so long as they: A) Speak reasonably good English, our national language; B) Understand baseball, our national pastime, and C) Eat pizza, our national food. Sure, everybody in this townhouse block knows that the people in unit 15 are descended primarily from slaves and their skin is a little darker than ours. But they come to our parties, their kids play with our kids (and more importantly, date them), the people who come to visit them are not all--or even mostly--dark skinned... and they speak good English, root for the Nationals and eat pizza. So it isn't that people who don't look like you and me have to choose whether to live among "white" people or "black" people. The choice is whether they want to isolate themselves in a part of town where most of the people have dark skin, or come live among the rest of us, where they're perfectly welcome. There is no "white" community in America's cosmopolitan cities. It's just an American community. In my experience the term "African-American" is almost out of vogue. Everybody simply says "black" now. (I say "Afro-American," the original version, because the prefix "Afro-" is used everywhere else and it's consistent with "Euro-.") As I noted, I hate the terms "white" and "black." If a person who is not of European ancestry decides to learn to speak without his parents' accent, dress like us, eat our food, socialize with us and live among us, he can drop the first part of his name (African-, Iranian-, Mexican-, Chinese-, Arab-, Vietnamese-, etc.) and become an unhyphenated American like all the rest of us. But if he is known as a "black" American, there's nothing he can do to stop being "black." And spare us the jokes about Michael Jackson.Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Perhaps its a question of language differences, but not all languages are limited by not having a neutral pronoun which can be used for God and note that the Quran itself does not confine itself to any specific number or gender for God. If you like we can use the the pronoun They/Them for Allah/God, it makes no difference new thread:http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?t=104938
SAM, we're talking about the sort of fantasy only a 15 year old boy would believe. That you actually believe this stuff is IMO actually quite astounding. I can understand why you're an apologist. You simply don't like your own belief system. Which is natural. It's antiqued and honestly this bit on 'Companions' is, frankly, a tad bit stupid. So, what ever you want to think these magical 'Companions' are you can, but, most Muslims think of them as milky pearl white skinned virgins. Which is pathetic to me. But, I'm not into White chicks so meh.... We have been through this before with the head chopping. Whether 'Companions' exist or not means nothing. We're talking about motivating horny young men with taunts of girlie pleasures in Heaven (which though base) defines what IS beauty. YOU and I both know "Fair and Lovely" is bullshit. Skin color is meaningless. So, perhaps you should blame the Qur'an for so many people dreaming of bonking virgin White Chicks? Most Muslim men think this is indeed their just rewards. This suggests fair skin as beautiful predates any influences the British ever had in India. Funny enough, I actually just spent 2 hours chatting with an Indian friend of mine and she was telling me she has always hated being dark. Her mother always referred to her as "the dark daughter" (relative to her sister who was the "fair daughter"). Get this, now, she tells me in the south of India, there they don't care. But, get closer to the North and it's all about "milky white skin". I wonder if it's because of the influence of the Qur'an and the interpretation of "fair skinned" 'Companions' in heaven? Now, I wouldn't think so. Just as I don't think it has to do with the British. What I think is, it has to do with living in a house with less exposure to the sun versus working the fields. Obviously the woman with light skin would be healthier and more prized by men because of a better diet and healthy lifestyle equates to procreation. The Qur'an refers to white colored women (fair colored to be precise) because this is what Arab/Persians found attractive - for the exact same reasons as in India. When the verses about heaven made their way into the Qur'an light fair colored Persian girls came from good families and were better off and more healthy. Darker girls worked in the fields or lived a nomadic life. In a classic example of sexual selection, the lighter the skin the more desirable. Thus the Whouris are even translucent like! Like Peacock tails. This IMO is another example, in a long list of examples, of short-sightedness and lack of forethought in this set of religious myths. As see it, we're talking about a 15 year olds wet dream. Which is really a joke.
First of all, the Quran does not refer to white coloured women anywhere at all. But don't let that stop you. Carry on about pearly white eyes of gender neutral companions and how they manifest colour prejudice against women. Yes, a fifteen year old would probably fantasise about pearly white eyes
Let's use She. We can easily accept 'She' as gender neutral. We refer to boats, cars, pretty much anything as 'She'. We even refer to feelings and situations as 'She'. She's a beaut. (meaning, nice car, boat, house, etc...). She'll be right. (meaning, things will work out fine). So, 'She' would a more natural choice even compared with 'They/Them'. So SAM, you going to use She for Allah?
SAM, these 'Companions' have such White skin it's translucent! Anyway, I already said, this is what people believe, which is what matters. Geesh, sometimes you remind me of those people over in the StarTrek/StarWar thread that go on and on and get all bent out of shape about force shield power output .... as if it were real!! Jedi Force is not real! People think the 'Companions' are white skinned. I didn't make it up. That's what they themselves say. As these idiots are the "authorities" on this bullshit they "teach" the younger idiots to think it's white chicks - being brainwashed gullible idiots that what they believe. So your beef is with them not me! That aside, let me just ask you this SAM, do you really truly and honestly believe there are 'Companions' awaiting you in Heaven that you're going to have sex with? I am seriously curious. I mean, 15 year old boys, yes, I was one, I can see them buying this bullshit. But an adult woman? Well, I just don't know?!?! You going to get some Houri in Heaven SAM Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Hmm I think its mostly irrelevant. In fact, I don't remember once considering these companions - as the prayer goes, rabbana atina fid duniya hassantun wa fil akhirati hassantun - and contemplating the afterlife being nothing more than fruitless conjecture, I prefer to focus on the hasanah available to me in this life. As for what happens after we die, well we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. Still, while in this life, I would pay attention to what I am actually reading rather than substituting my own cliches for whats written.
Let me see if I have you correctly, She actually made a conscious being (aka: 'Companions') for humans to have sex with in Heaven? Really? A living conscious being for sex. You think She did that SAM?
Umm who said anything about sex? Your cliches are getting more and more pronounced. A hasanah can be anything from a good word to a good thought to a good action. Sex is part of the hasanah of the corporeal world, no doubt, but necrophilia seems to be more on the kinky scale
You're not using "She"? Why? I thought it was OK because it was gender neural. Come on SAM, break out of your thought-terminated "Him". I have to say you are strong in your convictions. I mean, most people would be pretty embarrassed to believe in a religion that has a God who made beautiful fair, good, virgin 'Companions' that don't pee, poop or stay pregnant and have pointy breasts. That shit is funny shit. I know it is because not wanting to bias my Indian friend I popped open the WIKI page and said hey check this out. Her eyes are scanning the page and she's like: What? What!? What is this? You have got to be kidding me. LOL.... But, as I said in the past, I must assume it's a strong sense of fear of death and what "makes good sense" is really a feeling you get when you stop worrying about death. This probably correlates with seeming sensible ... if that makes sense. Because if you step back and think about these 'Companions' I'm sure you'd have a good laugh as well. I cherish your apologetics, but I certainly don't envy your position. Anyway, it's not my interpretation. There are literally hundreds of millions of Muslim men who think Heaven is filled with virgin to bonk. I'm wondering SAM: Is that really true? Do the Virgin 'Companions' in Islam Heaven have sex with good Muslim men like all these web pages suggest? Did She really make these beings?
I actually work in the Security industry and in a city that has a VERY large population of 'foreign' ancestry. Blacks (I hate the term afro-cliche) are watched more so than 'white' simply because they are actually more likely to commit a crime especially as a lot of black youth wears hoods and semi masks and think they look 'cool'. They are actually drawing attention to themselves. Yes, and other kids do too of both asian and white. Its more stereotyping than ciches.
