Calif. Muslims, Jews File Lawsuit Against Circumcision Ban

The recent efforts to ban circumcision in San Francisco have brought about one curious unintended result: Muslim and Jewish Americans have teamed up in the city to file a lawsuit against the ballot measure. The “unlikely coalition,” as dubbed by The Blaze, was formed because the ritual of circumcision is common to both the Muslim and Jewish faiths.

Now that San Francisco election officials have confirmed that there are enough signatures to qualify the initiative for the ballot, the city will be the first to hold a public vote on banning male circumcision. If passed, the measure would prohibit circumcision on males under the age of 18, making it a misdemeanor punishable by either a fine of up to $1,000 or up to a year in jail.

It is because the measure would permit no exemptions, including for religious reasons, that Jewish and Muslim residents are collaborating in the lawsuit. The Blaze notes,

The case filed in San Francisco Superior Court asks the court to remove the voter initiative from the city’s Nov. 8 ballot, arguing that California law bars local governments from restricting medical procedures.

The lawsuit includes five Jewish and three Muslim plaintiffs, as well as two physicians who regularly perform circumcisions. It also includes the Anti-Defamation League and the local chapter of the Jewish Community Relations Council as plaintiffs.

Leticia Preza, one of the plaintiffs in the case, declares of the proposed ban:

It’s a measure that would basically infringe upon my rights as a Muslim to practice here. It would also take away my rights as a parent to choose what’s a good procedure for my child.

Supporters of the ban contend that circumcision is equitable to genital mutilation and conclude that it should not be imposed on children by their parents. They claim the procedure is too painful and dangerous to justify its continued use.

"Parents are really guardians, and guardians have to do what's in the best interest of the child. It's his body. It's his choice," claimed Lloyd Schofield, the measure's lead proponent and a longtime San Francisco resident.

The New American's Daniel Sayani notes dissembling in this assertion, however:

Yet, this is a position that reeks of hypocrisy, as the same anti-circumcision individuals often support a pro-choice position on abortion, arbitrarily defending a born child’s supposed “right” not be circumcised, while supporting the “right” of an individual parent to legally kill their unborn children as late as 36 weeks of pregnancy (approximately nine months of gestation). In fact, San Francisco’s permissive culture has been warmly embracing of several abortionists and even late-term abortion practitioners: According to attorney Leonard Moscowitz, “It is amazing that in San Francisco, you can abort a 5, 6, or 7 month old baby, but you soon may not perform a circumcision on a 9 month, 8 day-old baby.”

Meanwhile, the ban has provoked a great deal of ire from both the religious and medical communities, as well as from constitutionalists who take issue with the local government's overreach. The Blaze indicates:

The ballot measure is running into fierce opposition, especially among Jews and Muslims who consider circumcision a sacred religious rite. They say the ban would violate their constitutional rights and run counter to San Francisco’s tradition of cultural and religious tolerance.

International health organizations have promoted male circumcision to help reduce the spread of the AIDS virus, but there hasn’t been the same kind of push in the U.S., in part because nearly 80 percent of American men are already circumcised, compared with the worldwide average of 30 percent.

TNA's Sayani noted the number of health benefits associated with circumcision:

There is ample medical evidence that circumcision is linked to lower rates of penile cancer, thrush infections, balanitis (inflammation of the glans), posthitis and phimosis (two other severe inflammatory conditions), sexual dysfunction, and a reduction in HIV/AIDS and Human Papilloma Virus (HPV, which is linked to sexually-transmitted cervical cancer) transmission rates (in African and other developing societies) as well as improved hygiene.

Plaintiff Jeremy Benjamin voiced his concern over the ban: “As Jews, we take the threat of banning circumcision personally. This measure singles us out, along with the Muslim community, as illegitimate and unwanted in our own city.”

The city of Santa Monica was considering a similar ban, until the author of Santa Monica’s proposal, Matthew Hess, created an anti-Semitic comic called Foreskin Man. What Hess called a “joke” and “publicity stunt” ultimately revealed what many believed to be an underlying anti-Semitic position behind the circumcision ban. The comic provoked such a public outcry that the city of Santa Monica elected to drop the proposal.

Jena Troutman, who originally submitted the initiative to the Santa Monica city clerk, retracted her proposal, telling the Jewish Journal, “It shouldn’t have been about religion in the first place. Ninety-five percent of people aren’t doing it for religious reasons, and with everyone from the New York Times to Glenn Beck focusing on the religious issue, it’s closing Americans down to the conversation.”

As of now, the circumcision ban in San Francisco is scheduled to appear on the ballot in November. Whether the lawsuit will remove the measure from the ballot remains to be seen.

http://www.thenewamerican.com/culture/faith-and-morals/7981-calif-muslims-jews-file-lawsuit-against-circumcision-ban

Defining Atheism

The "atheist" movement keeps shooting itself in the foot by failing to reach a consensus regarding the meaning of "atheism."
-Jeff Jay Lowder
A comic strip on this controversy.

The real definition of atheism: the belief that there is no God.
The fake definition of atheism: the lack of belief in God.

Proof:

A = Without
Theos = God
Atheos = Without God
Thus
Atheism is the belief that there is no God.


The references state what the real definition of atheism is:



•"Atheism, from the Greek a-theos ("no-god"), is the philosophical position that God doesn't exist. It is distinguished from agnosticism, the argument that it is impossible to know whether God exists or not" (Academic American Encyclopedia).
•"Atheism, system of thought developed around the denial of God's existence. Atheism, so defined, first appeared during the Enlightenment, the age of reason" (Random House Encyclopedia-1977).
•"Atheism (from the Greek a-, not, and theos, god) is the view that there are no gods. A widely used sense denotes merely not believing in God and is consistent with agnosticism. A stricter sense denotes a belief that there is no God, the use has become the standard one" (Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy-1995).
•"Atheism is the doctrine that there is no God. Some atheists support this claim by arguments, but these arguments are usually directed against the Christian concept of God, and are largely irrelevant to other possible gods" (Oxford Companion to Philosophy-1995).
•"Atheism (Greek, a- [private prefix] + theos, god) is the view that there is no divine being, no God" (Dictionary of Philosophy, Thomas Mautner, Editor-1996).
•"Atheism is the belief that God doesn't exist" (The World Book Encyclopedia-1991).
•"According to the most usual definition, an atheist is a person who maintains that there is no god…"(rejects eccentric definitions of the word) (The Encyclopedia of Philosophy-1967).
•"Atheism is the doctrine that God does not exist, that belief in the existence of God is a false belief. The word God here refers to a divine being regarded as the independent creator of the world, a being superlatively powerful, wise and good" (Encyclopedia of Religion-1987).
•"Atheism (Greek and Roman): Atheism is a dogmatic creed, consisting in the denial of every kind of supernatural power. Atheism has not often been seriously maintained at any period of civilized thought" (Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics-Vol II).
•"Atheism denies the existence of deity" (Funk and Wagnall's New Encyclopedia-Vol I).

Furthermore, I went to my local library and randomly picked out a dictionary to see what atheism meant. This is what I found from this dictionary.

----------------


Real atheists who are... well, real atheists


Also, there have been real atheists who define the real definition of atheism as a belief that there is no God. That would be people like:

Julian Baggini - "Atheism is in fact extremely simple to define: it is the belief that there is no God or gods." (from Atheism: A Very Short Introduction)

Paul Edwards - "[An atheist is] a person who maintains that there is no god." (from Encylopedia of Philosophy)

Doug Krueger - "Atheism - the belief that there are no gods." (from What is ATHEISM?)

Jeff Jay Lowder - After saying that atheists would be under the heading of "naturalism", he defines it as someone who belives that "[t]here are no supernatural beings. If naturalism is true, there is no God, no devil, no angels, no heaven and no hell." (from Jeff Jay Lowder's debate with Phil Fernandes)

David Mills - "Essentially, an atheist is a person who rejects the concept of god." (from Atheist Universe)

Theodore Drange, Quentin Smith, J.L. Schellenbergjust are also real atheists... this is just to name a few. As far as I can tell there have been no fake atheists who had the courage to say that these real atheists were wrong about the definition of atheism.

----------------


Even Charles Darwin (an agnostic) knew the real definition of atheism:





"I have never been an atheist in the sense of denying the existence of a God."
- Letter to Rev. J. Fordyc, July 7, 1879.

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However fake atheist, Michael Martin, uses the fake definition of atheism:



"In Greek 'a' means 'without' or 'not' and 'theos' means 'god.' From this standpoint an atheist would simply be someone without a belief in God, not necessarily someone who believes that God does not exist. According to its Greek roots, then, atheism is a negative view, characterized by the absence of belief in God."

Shandon Guthrie rebuts the definition:

***BEGIN QUOTE***

In this case another "bait and switch" method is being employed but in a more obvious contradictory setting. On the one hand we are to concur that "'a' means 'without' or 'not' and 'theos' means 'god.'" On the other hand we are supposed to conclude from this that "without a belief in God" is what the term means. This is perhaps to the hope that the reader will not see the imported word "believe" from one sentence to the next. I do agree with Martin that the term is certainly a negative view in that it negates something. But, as Martin unwittingly admits or intentionally distorts, it is the negation of God himself not a negation of a belief in God given Martin's comment that "'a' means 'without' or 'not' and 'theos' means 'god.'" Wouldn't this suggest that atheism is to be etymologically understood as without/no - god?

Due to the disparity between conventional and contemporary understandings (revisionist views?) of atheism, philosophers have attempted to branch atheism into two separate categories: positive atheism and negative atheism. Positive atheism is the classical understanding contra Martin. It is the definitive view, the strong view, that God (or any god) does not exist. Negative atheism, the weak view, is the mere absence of belief in God (or any divine being - sometimes it serves as a synonym for naturalism). In this relatively new understanding atheism enjoys a category split so that both definitions can maintain their place amongst their parent heading atheism. However, this amounts to reducing atheism to nothing more than agnosticism. Agnosticism was originally coined by the 19th century lecturer at the School of Mines in London, Thomas Henry Huxley. He is best noted as being "Darwin's bulldog" since he adamantly defended Charles Darwin's infant theory of evolution. Huxley himself, concerning his adoption of the term agnostic, writes:


Huxley wrote:
"Some twenty years ago, or thereabouts, I invented the word 'Agnostic' to denote people who, like myself, confess themselves to be hopelessly ignorant concerning a variety of matters, about which metaphysicians and theologians, both orthodox and heterodox, dogmatise with utmost confidence...It simply means that a man shall not say he knows or believes that which he has no scientific grounds for professing to know or believe."

"Soft" agnosticism, shall we say, is the mere absence of belief in God (or any deity) since it suspends judgment about matters of metaphysics and theology. The more appropriate epistemological position that Huxley may of had in mind is what is known as "hard" agnosticism - it is impossible to determine whether or not God exists. In either case, agnosticism neither confirms nor denies any epistemological claims about God and thus it properly satisfies the status of being a default position. In a sense, the agnostic places phenomenological brackets around the propositions "God exists" and "God does not exist" to explore unchartered areas of research that may offer insight toward reaching a conclusion.

Despite the historical and philological difficulty with deviating from the roots of atheism and its mainstream approaches to it, perhaps we shall have to consider the matter open to the atheist who wears the label negative or positive atheist. In the spirit of charity, we may be forced to acknowledge against the most reliable and broadest understanding of atheism to include mere deniers of belief in any god in our casual encounters and dialogues. But it should not cause us to go astray from the conventional and usual meaning of the term from which many modern atheists have deviated.

***END QUOTE***

----------------


Why then do fake atheists chump out and use the fake definition of atheism?


Ken Samples explains:

***BEGIN QUOTE***

By definition, atheism is the world view that denies the existence of God. To be more specific, traditional atheism (or offensive atheism) positively affirms that there never was, is not now, and never will be a God in or beyond the world. But can this dogmatic claim be verified?

The atheist cannot logically prove God's nonexistence. And here's why: to know that a transcendent God does not exist would require a perfect knowledge of all things (omniscience). To attain this knowledge would require simultaneous access to all parts of the world and beyond (omnipresence). Therefore, to be certain of the atheist's claim one would have to possess godlike characteristics. Obviously, mankind's limited nature precludes these special abilities. The offensive atheist's dogmatic claim is therefore unjustifiable. As logician Mortimer Adler has pointed out, the atheist's attempt to prove a universal negative is a self- defeating proposition. The Christian should therefore emphasize that the offensive atheist is unable to provide a logical disproof of God's existence.

*Defensive Atheism.* Many sophisticated atheists today are fully aware of the philosophical pitfalls connected to offensive or dogmatic atheism. Prominent atheists such as Gordon Stein and Carl Sagan have admitted that God's existence cannot be disproven. This has led such atheists to advocate what I call defensive atheism. Defensive atheism asserts that while God's existence cannot be logically or empirically disproven, it is nevertheless unproven.

Atheists of this variety have actually redefined atheism to mean "an absence of belief in God" rather than "a denial of God's existence." For this more moderate type of atheism, the concept of "God" is like that of a unicorn, leprechaun, or elf. While they cannot be disproven, they remain unproven. Defensive atheism's unbelief is grounded in the rejection of the proofs for God's existence, and/or the belief that the Christian concept of God (or any other God) lacks logical consistency.

An appropriate Christian rejoinder at this point is that defensive atheism is using a stipulative or nonstandard definition for the word atheism. Paul Edwards, a prominent atheist and editor of The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, defines an atheist as "a person who maintains that there is no God." Atheism therefore implies a denial of God's existence, not just an absence of belief. It should also be stated that defensive atheism's absence of belief sounds very similar to agnosticism (which professes inability to determine whether God exists). The Christian should force the defensive atheist to show just how his (or her) atheism differs from agnosticism. Does he know or not know that there is no God?

***END QUOTE***

----------------

There you have it. The smoking gun on the real definition of atheism. With all the evidence right in front of their faces the fake atheist will never concede the real definition of atheism.

Can a Muslim be a sincere friend to a kaafir?

I have questions about Islam; can you explain them to me? Is it permissible for a Muslim to be a sincere friend to a person who is not Muslim?.

Praise be to Allaah.

It is not permissible for a Muslim to make friends with a mushrik or to take him as a close friend, because Islam calls on us to forsake the kaafirs and to disavow them, because they worship someone other than Allaah. Allaah says (interpretation of the meaning):

“O you who believe! Take not as friends the people who incurred the Wrath of Allaah (i.e. the Jews). Surely, they have despaired of (receiving any good in) the Hereafter, just as the disbelievers have despaired of those (buried) in graves (that they will not be resurrected on the Day of Resurrection)”

[al-Mumtahanah 60:13]

This was also the teaching of the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him).

1 – It was narrated from Abu Sa’eed al-Khudri (may Allaah be pleased with him) that he heard the Messenger of Allaah (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) say, “Do not keep company with anyone but a believer and do not let anyone eat your food but one who is pious.” (Narrated by al-Tirmidhi, 2395; Abu Dawood, 4832. Abu ‘Eesa al-Tirmidhi said: this hadeeth is hasan. It was also classed as hasan by al-Albaani in Saheeh al-Tirmidhi, 2519).

Abu ‘Eesa al-Khattaabi said: Rather he warned against keeping company with anyone who is not pious and against mixing with them or eating with them, because eating with a person instills friendship and love in the heart.

He said: do not make friends with anyone who is not pious; do not take him as a companion with whom you eat and chat.

(Ma’aalim al-Sunan, Haamish Mukhtasar Sunan Abi Dawood, 7/185, 186).

2 – It was narrated from Samurah that the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) said: “Do not live among the mushrikeen and do not mix with them, for whoever lives among them or mixes with them is not one of us.” (Narrated by al-Bayhaqi, 9/142; al-Haakim, 2/154. He said, it is saheeh according to the conditions of al-Bukhaari. The hadeeth was also classed as saheeh by al-Albaani in al-Silsilat al-Saheehah, 2/229 with its corroborating reports).

But it is permissible to deal with them in a kind manner in the hope that they might become Muslim.

It was narrated that Anas (may Allaah be pleased with him) said: There was a Jewish boy who used to serve the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him), and he fell sick. The Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) came to visit him. He sat by his head and said, “Become Muslim.” (The boy) looked at his father who was with him, and he (the father) said, “Obey Abu’l-Qaasim (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him).” So he became Muslim, and the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) went out, saying, “Praise be to Allaah Who has saved him from the Fire” (Narrated by al-Bukhaari, 1290).

And Allaah knows best.



Islam Q&A