You're possessed of something or another if you buy into their camelshit. Or perhaps you're just stupid. The jury is still out.

jez9999 wrote:

Clive Durdle wrote:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_toilet_etiquette

Here's my favourite:

The Prophet went out to answer the call of nature and asked me to bring three stones. I found two stones and searched for the third but could not find it. So took a dried piece of dung and brought it to him. He took the two stones and threw away the dung and said, "This is a filthy thing."

The Prophet wisely said "don't wipe shit off your ass with dried shit!!!" Praise be to Allah.

I am often fascinated by these little snippits and how the faithful totally miss what isn't written down.

Mo' followers was dumb enough to think dried shit was as good as a stone

If you let dogshit dry till it gets all white it makes great slingshot ammo. Leaves a powdery mark. Sort of a proto-paintball.

How do you kn... on second thoughts...

Laklak read his Mark Twain!

Read it? Hell, I'm so old I was in it.

Huckleberry! How've you been?

Nah! I had laklak down as more of a Puddn'head

While on the toilet, one must remain silent.

Try being quiet after a week's MOD iron rations and not enough fluids. Could you shite an iron bar and not wince? lmao, ah the memories.

jez9999 wrote:

Clive Durdle wrote:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_toilet_etiquette

Here's my favourite:

The Prophet went out to answer the call of nature and asked me to bring three stones. I found two stones and searched for the third but could not find it. So took a dried piece of dung and brought it to him. He took the two stones and threw away the dung and said, "This is a filthy thing."

The Prophet wisely said "don't wipe shit off your ass with dried shit!!!" Praise be to Allah.

Should've been three seashells...

Ironclad wrote:I recommend that the Jinn be flayed from their bare naked skin; it's the only way to be sure.

Unfortunately, in some parts they actually subscribe to this sort of shite. Belief that whatever you do to the person, the Jiin experiences too and if it's bad enough, the Jiin will leave them. Imagine suffering from schizophrenia in a country where mental illness is not recognised and possession is believed to be behind it's symptoms.

I recall nursing one patient whose well meaning but deluded family, particularly his elderly father, would bring bottles of water which had been blessed by the local Imam. When we noticed on one occassion that this was not just water but had suspiscious looking bits in it, we were informed that indeed it did have bits in it, tiny bits of Quranic verse. The dad also wanted us to hide copied pages of the Quran in his son's room and even lobbied his local MP when we refused to force his son to attend an exorcism he was trying to arrange but which his son did not want to attend. The dad more than once advocated beating the Jiins out of his son and spoke of family members in Pakistan who were jealous of his son's attendance at university and had cursed him.
We successfully treated his son with antipsychotic medication and he recovered enough to leave hospital and go back to continue his university degree, in pharmacology of all things. Maybe one day, he'll have a degree behind him to help explain to his father how his medication actually treated his illness and that bits of paper in water and wishfull thinking did nothing other than make his impotent father feel good about trying.

To some of you guys making jokes about this issue, I have to confess to being a bit pissed off at you. The women in the OP have been brought up on a diet of bullshit where mental illness is not recognised. It is a day to day challenge to mental health services to educate people. It even spills into physical care at times, delays diagnosis and complicates effective treatment but your mockery does nothing to help. Please try to be a little more considerate towards the afflicted and indoctrinated, it's not their fault that they hold these beliefs or became ill.

Blackadder wrote:

"We would like the NHS to work with mainstream Islamic scholars and Muslim groups in helping such individuals. Faith-based support should be offered as long as it does not contradict or oppose conventional medicine or treatment."

Earlier this month, Amina MWRC, in conjunction with the Rationalist Society of Pakistan, held an event titled Jinn, Black Magic and the Evil Eye: Fact or Fiction?

Good luck with that. Belief in Jinns and black magic is very much part of mainstream Islam. The only contribution they will get from mainstream Islamic scholars is yet more fuckwittery.

Thankfully, in some parts we are seeing more enlightened Imams who can reconcile their beliefs in Jiins with the existence of mental illnesses and are able to give spiritual comfort to people receiving evidence based treatment to diagnosed illnesses/conditions. Change is happening, just at glacial pace.

This is just a mass hysteria at most

monkeyboy wrote:

Blackadder wrote:

"We would like the NHS to work with mainstream Islamic scholars and Muslim groups in helping such individuals. Faith-based support should be offered as long as it does not contradict or oppose conventional medicine or treatment."

Earlier this month, Amina MWRC, in conjunction with the Rationalist Society of Pakistan, held an event titled Jinn, Black Magic and the Evil Eye: Fact or Fiction?

Good luck with that. Belief in Jinns and black magic is very much part of mainstream Islam. The only contribution they will get from mainstream Islamic scholars is yet more fuckwittery.

Thankfully, in some parts we are seeing more enlightened Imams who can reconcile their beliefs in Jiins with the existence of mental illnesses and are able to give spiritual comfort to people receiving evidence based treatment to diagnosed illnesses/conditions. Change is happening, just at glacial pace.

I wonder if we need to think through that type of thing. If the imam believes in Jinn (are there women imams?) is he actually able to help?

As a child I sometimes thought there were trolls under the pavement and therefore had to avoid stepping on the cracks. Should I have sought out a troll priest?

If a society does not understand "madness", does not have an understanding of child development, of emotional intelligence, do I really go to someone who also has no understanding of these matters?

Isn't it a simple professional malpractice issue? If you are not qualified, why because you belong to a certain religion are you believed to be?

monkeyboy wrote:To some of you guys making jokes about this issue, I have to confess to being a bit pissed off at you. The women in the OP have been brought up on a diet of bullshit where mental illness is not recognised. It is a day to day challenge to mental health services to educate people. It even spills into physical care at times, delays diagnosis and complicates effective treatment but your mockery does nothing to help. Please try to be a little more considerate towards the afflicted and indoctrinated, it's not their fault that they hold these beliefs or became ill.

Whilst I would agree with you if these women were being directly ridiculed in a manner that caused them harm, don't you think that our ridicule HERE might just be OUR way of coping with the madness?

I certainly think that my frequent visits here, and occasional visits to Skeptics In The Pub, are my way of coping with the fact that most of the world seems to be crazy, pointing and laughing and knowing that others are doing so too.

Clive Durdle wrote:

monkeyboy wrote:

Blackadder wrote:

"We would like the NHS to work with mainstream Islamic scholars and Muslim groups in helping such individuals. Faith-based support should be offered as long as it does not contradict or oppose conventional medicine or treatment."

Earlier this month, Amina MWRC, in conjunction with the Rationalist Society of Pakistan, held an event titled Jinn, Black Magic and the Evil Eye: Fact or Fiction?

Good luck with that. Belief in Jinns and black magic is very much part of mainstream Islam. The only contribution they will get from mainstream Islamic scholars is yet more fuckwittery.

Thankfully, in some parts we are seeing more enlightened Imams who can reconcile their beliefs in Jiins with the existence of mental illnesses and are able to give spiritual comfort to people receiving evidence based treatment to diagnosed illnesses/conditions. Change is happening, just at glacial pace.

I wonder if we need to think through that type of thing. If the imam believes in Jinn (are there women imams?) is he actually able to help?

As a child I sometimes thought there were trolls under the pavement and therefore had to avoid stepping on the cracks. Should I have sought out a troll priest?

If a society does not understand "madness", does not have an understanding of child development, of emotional intelligence, do I really go to someone who also has no understanding of these matters?

Isn't it a simple professional malpractice issue? If you are not qualified, why because you belong to a certain religion are you believed to be?

Well, the experience we've had in a few cases has been reasonably positive. The Imams we have worked with, or should I say, who have worked with us, have been able to help reassure people convinced that they are possessed that treatment will likely help and to convince the ill person that seeking treatment is not some offence to Allah. It really has cut through some of the resistance that we have encountered in the past. Sure, I'd prefer enlightened, superstition free patients to work with but that's not happening in all cases. Thankfully, the younger generations are less set in the ways of their elders so perhaps after the old folks have passed on, things might improve at a faster rate. I should imagine that education is playing a huge part in helping us but if the Imams help bridge the gap for now, I'm up for it. End of the day, it's about getting people engaged in treatment.

It's not about malpractice in any way. The Imams are being used to reassure patients that treatment is OK, not to deliver it. If they're saying Jiin where I say hallucination, it makes little difference to the outcome if the use of an anti psychotic is effective so long as the patient accepts that the anti psychotic did the trick. If Allah gets some praise for helping out, so long as the patient recovers, I really couldn't care that much to be honest. Other faiths have pastoral workers well established in hospitals doing similar roles. It's good to have the Imams getting on board at last.

The snag is that actually the Muslim population has become far more superstitious over recent decades than they were in the fifties and sixties. The world was actually pre Khomeni moving away from religion quite rapidly. Afghanistan under the Soviets was producing women doctors teachers nurses and professionals.

Bangladesh has a very strong secular tradition.

Alom Shaha grew up in a strict Bangladeshi Muslim community in South-East London in the 1970s and 80s. He was expected to go to mosque regularly and recite passages in Arabic from the Quran, without being told what they meant. Alom spent his teenage years juggling two utterly different worlds: a chaotic, sometimes funny, sometimes tragic family life on a council estate, and that of a student at a privileged private school set amongst the idyllic green playing fields of Dulwich.

In a charming blend of memoir, philosophy, and science, Alom explores the questions about faith and the afterlife that we all ponder. Through a series of loose ‘lessons’, he tells his own compelling story, drawing on the theories of some of history’s greatest thinkers and interrogating the fallacies that have impeded humanity for centuries. Alom recounts how his education and formative experiences led him to question how to live without being tied to what his parents, priests, or teachers told him to believe, and offers insights so that others may do the same.

http://alomshaha.com

Clive Durdle wrote:Why do we not challenge this sort of stuff directly? Is it really racist and Islamophobic to do so?

Immaterial: both are in the eye of beholder, so the labels can be attached at will.

Clive Durdle wrote:The snag is that actually the Muslim population has become far more superstitious over recent decades than they were in the fifties and sixties. The world was actually pre Khomeni moving away from religion quite rapidly. Afghanistan under the Soviets was producing women doctors teachers nurses and professionals.

In fairness, I think perhaps you might mean some parts of the Muslim community rather than all of it. Its grossly unfair to many Muslims to generalise in this way. There are and have been more female heads of state in several predominantly Muslim countries than most predominantly Christian or secular countries for example.
Would it be fair to all American Christians to label them as increasingly retarted because of the recent increased insistence of creotards wanting cretinism taught in schools? Doubt that would be accepted so easily.
Please remember, just because all salmon are fish, doesn't follow that all fish are salmon.