iamthereforeithink wrote:Aha, so Islam is ok with homosexuality, since by this logic, men who swim in the sea would be homosexuals?

I guess.

Funny part is, there's no obvious clues about the "gender" of many English words. It's obvious that words used to describe entities that possess male and female gender in life are associated with the gender of the subject, but outside that, my understanding is that nouns referring to inanimate objects are grammatically neuter. But of course, grammatical gender only has importance in languages possessing a certain minimum degree of inflection - namely, the spelling of words changes with grammatical function.

Grammatical gender is important in French (which oddly enough, disposes of the neuter gender in nouns and adjectives altogether), German, etc., because these languages still retain a considerable degree of inflection, and of course is of fundamental importance in Latin and Classical Greek, as these languages are fully inflected. Last time I checked, Russian was also fully inflected, and in addition, possessed two noun cases not seen in Western European languages, in the form of the instrumental and prepositional cases.

English has largely abandoned inflection, using word position in a sentence to reflect grammatical function. Though some remnants of inflection persist, such as the concatenation of "s" to the end of a noun to construct plural forms, with, of course, exceptions for those nouns already ending in "s" in the singular, and loanwords from Greek and Latin, whose original inflections are frequently preserved in the crossover to English usage.

And after that, I still find it truly bizarre, that anyone should consider grammatical gender to be an indication of real gender in the case of inanimate entities, let alone that this should have any effect upon humans encountering those inanimate objects in everyday usage. But I've long since ceased to be surprised at the nuttiness of religious fundamentalists, and their willingness to twist such concepts in order to paint a fake veneer of "justification" over their frankly creepy desires.

Made of Stars wrote:

Emmeline wrote:

According to the report, "the fatwas issued by both groups (the Muslim Brotherhood and Salafis) regard women as strange creatures who are created solely for sex. They considered the voices of women, their looks and presence outside the walls of their homes an 'offence'. Some even went as far as to consider women as a whole offensive."

Another fatwa prohibited women from "eating certain vegetables or even touching cucumbers or bananas", due to their phallic imagery which could lead women down the wrong path.

Another fatwa directed women to "turn off the air conditioners at home in the absence of their husbands as this could indicate to a neighbour that the woman is at home alone and any of them could commit adultery with her".

Another fatwa orders that girls as young as 10-years-old be married "to prevent them from deviating from the right path".

Bloody hell - these Islamists (NOT most Muslims) are bat shit crazy.

Yep. Same can be said for all fundamentalist religionists, IMO.

The religious mindset does set up pre-conditions that can trigger bat-shit crazy..

Argh! Can't someone just ban religion?

Only GOD. !!!!!!!!

I'm sure that if the god they worship actually existed, he didn't intend for his followers to spout the rubbish they do these days. It was more about separating their grazing stock, and plants, and foods, than it was about people swimming in the sea.

We know what this is really about. Some beardy fuck woke up one day after a dream about some nubile young Muslim girl emerging from the sea with her soaking clothes clinging to her curves, her nipples erect from the cold, and he was so filled with the horn and self-loathing in equal measure that he decided this was the fault of all women and that they should be punished. Next stop- fatwa!

Yep, something like that.

On the plane last weekend, I found myself sitting next to a haji (someone who'd been to Mecca -- you know them by the long white dress and trousers outfit they sport in public). He was in the middle seat, between me and some arbitrary man. It was really amusing watching him squirm every time he brushed against me on the flight. I'm sure he rushed to the prayer room at the airport to beg Allah to cleanse him of the impurity of the woman who sat next to him on the plane. He was gone, disappeared the minute the plane landed, I didn't even see him at the luggage carousel. Maybe he gave up his belongings to get himself purified after being contaminated by me.

Emmeline wrote:

Made of Stars wrote:

Emmeline wrote:
Bloody hell - these Islamists (NOT most Muslims) are bat shit crazy.

Yep. Same can be said for all fundamentalist religionists, IMO.

Agreed - some of the Orthodox Judaism stuff is bonkers ie not sitting on seats where menstruating women might have sat.

You don't have to put 'fundamentalist' or 'orthodox' in front of a religion before calling it bat-shit crazy. It all is.

I assume that which gender the sea has is determined by Allah's beloved Arabic.
Which leads to the question: are Arabic dictionaries segregated, feminine nouns on the left, masculine on the right? If so, there will be male nouns printed, disgustingly, on the back of female ones and vice (oh, the vice!) versa. So probably best to have two halves to the dictionary or to be on the safe side, print it in two volumes.
I wonder if one of the magical inimitable properties of the Koran is that no masculine and feminine words are printed on the same piece of paper? Could hardly have it being stoned for impropriety, after all.

Agrippina wrote:Yep, something like that.

On the plane last weekend, I found myself sitting next to a haji (someone who'd been to Mecca -- you know them by the long white dress and trousers outfit they sport in public). He was in the middle seat, between me and some arbitrary man. It was really amusing watching him squirm every time he brushed against me on the flight. I'm sure he rushed to the prayer room at the airport to beg Allah to cleanse him of the impurity of the woman who sat next to him on the plane. He was gone, disappeared the minute the plane landed, I didn't even see him at the luggage carousel. Maybe he gave up his belongings to get himself purified after being contaminated by me.

Did you talk to him, smile, wish him asalam and try and shake his hand? You have sent him and ten relatives to hell! And on English word order, green big giants...

Oeditor wrote:I assume that which gender the sea has is determined by Allah's beloved Arabic.
Which leads to the question: are Arabic dictionaries segregated, feminine nouns on the left, masculine on the right? If so, there will be male nouns printed, disgustingly, on the back of female ones and vice (oh, the vice!) versa. So probably best to have two halves to the dictionary or to be on the safe side, print it in two volumes.
I wonder if one of the magical inimitable properties of the Koran is that no masculine and feminine words are printed on the same piece of paper? Could hardly have it being stoned for impropriety, after all.

Clive Durdle wrote:

Agrippina wrote:Yep, something like that.

On the plane last weekend, I found myself sitting next to a haji (someone who'd been to Mecca -- you know them by the long white dress and trousers outfit they sport in public). He was in the middle seat, between me and some arbitrary man. It was really amusing watching him squirm every time he brushed against me on the flight. I'm sure he rushed to the prayer room at the airport to beg Allah to cleanse him of the impurity of the woman who sat next to him on the plane. He was gone, disappeared the minute the plane landed, I didn't even see him at the luggage carousel. Maybe he gave up his belongings to get himself purified after being contaminated by me.

Did you talk to him, smile, wish him asalam and try and shake his hand? You have sent him and ten relatives to hell! And on English word order, green big giants...

He just slid into his seat and did up the seatbelt, didn't acknowledge me. I was interested to see the body language, so I didn't try to talk to him either. What gets me about these types is that other people will apologise if they're late getting to the middle seat. Especially as I'd stayed standing up so I could let him in. He didn't even nod his head, just sat down and spent the flight trying to get away from me, while I played a golf game on my iPad.

It would've been interesting to engage him in conversation but not even a smile.

What's the "English word order" thing? It's gone way over my head.

Doubtdispelled wrote:

Oeditor wrote:I assume that which gender the sea has is determined by Allah's beloved Arabic.
Which leads to the question: are Arabic dictionaries segregated, feminine nouns on the left, masculine on the right? If so, there will be male nouns printed, disgustingly, on the back of female ones and vice (oh, the vice!) versa. So probably best to have two halves to the dictionary or to be on the safe side, print it in two volumes.
I wonder if one of the magical inimitable properties of the Koran is that no masculine and feminine words are printed on the same piece of paper? Could hardly have it being stoned for impropriety, after all.

How did I miss this gem?

http://www.ecenglish.com/learnenglish/l ... word-order

This is burned into our souls, it is almost impossible to get it wrong if English is your first language.

Ah yes, plurals - octopii!

Clive Durdle wrote:http://www.ecenglish.com/learnenglish/lessons/adjective-word-order

This is burned into our souls, it is almost impossible to get it wrong if English is your first language.

Oh OK, not thinking about that because as you say, it's burned into our souls.

Clive Durdle wrote:Ah yes, plurals - octopii!

Silly me, I say octopussies.

My autocorrect says octopuses/octopi are both correct.

And bringing the subjects together! NSFW

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File: ... s_Wife.jpg