On 25-Jan-09 22:51, somebody wrote:
> "somebody" <x### [at] ycom> wrote in message news:497cdd31@news.povray.org...
>> "andrel" <a_l### [at] hotmailcom> wrote in message
> 
>>> I disagree. The refusal of jews and muslims to eat pork or obeying
>>> Ramadan or sabbath is firmly established in the books. Your point that
>>> the books were written by humans may be true but is irrelevant. For the
>>> believers it is *provably* part of their religion.
>>> OTOH you have things like women to have to wear hats on sunday when
>>> going to church as is the practice in some circles in the Netherlands.
>>> This has no basis in the script but rests on an interpretation of (IIRC)
>>> Timothy 2:9-10 (no don't ask me how they do that). The common cultural
>>> idea that women have to wear headscarfs or worse also rests on such an
>>> interpretation of similar words by Mohamed.
> 
>> It's also written in the "books" that it's just dandy to kill infidels,
>> homosexuals... etc. And that headscarves may not be in the books doesn't
>> mean Muslims don't feel as strongly about it as pork.

If you add 'many' between 'mean' and 'Muslims' you have exactly the 
reason why I choose the example.

>> Either way, granting
>> rights, priviledges and exceptions based on certain view that some people
>> wrote or did not write in some books, and inconsistenly at that, at some
>> point in history, is a bad, bad idea.
> 
> Also, of course, such a "book based" policy would arbitrarily discriminate
> against cultures whose traditions are more oral than written. The judicial
> system should not be in the business of deciding which religions are more
> legitimate than others, or which parts of a religion (pork) are from god,
> which parts (headscarves) from man.

But they do already. Everytime a woman complains that she is 
discriminated against because she has to wear that scarf, the judge when 
ruling in her favor effectively rules that a scarf is a religious and 
not a cultural phenomenon. I don't think any judge or politician has 
enough guts to rule or pass a law recognizing the fact that the lady in 
question was lied to and naively believed what she was told.

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