hello, everybody

I know I always bring this up, but this question kind of made me laugh

It's about a news article that mentions that there is a very high rate of pornography use in Muslim countries

meanwhile, 5 of the 8 most recent questions on this site are about sex

what is the obsession with sex on this site?

@infatuated Hello, there

how are you?

Hi @Daniel. I am fine. How about you? I was actually writing an answer to your question here.

@infatuated I am well :) which question?

Sex and muslims.

@infatuated Ah. I'm not really asking about sex and muslims

more about sex and the people who participate on this site

That article's claim aside, the fact that there is a high rate of sex-related questions on muslim forums is not in and of itself an indication of sex obsession among muslims. A major factor is that Islamic law covers the most intimate aspects of our life, and hence muslims have to inquire Islam about almost each and everything they do.

I have no idea whether that's representative of Muslims as a whole

@infatuated Yes, I understand that

the same is true of Jewish law, though

and you do not see this phenomenon on the Judaism.SE site

Could that be because Jews are statistically much smaller in numbers that the more than a billion muslim population?

hmm, maybe not I think.

@infatuated Could be. But a more relevant statistic is the number of site participants in J.SE and I.SE

I don't know those statistics

In any case, that shouldn't affect the proportion of sex-related questions.

Part of it could be the relative inexperience of many of the questioners here. There are a lot of people who post questions once and then disappear

and a lot of those questions are duplicates

so it's really the same questions being asked over and over

The proportion yes, that's why I doubted the assumption. Socioeconomic circumstances may also be partly responsible. I don't know.

@infatuated How so? I imagine that this site attracts people from a variety of socio-economic backgrounds

although slightly tending toward more wealthy people

I am not sure if poverty and low-education opportunities in some muslim countries can be responsible. or the fact that muslims are much more modest and conservative in sex-related questions and hence have to inquire online forums for such questions.

@infatuated Interesting

tangentially, are online forums considered reliable sources for determining how to make decisions?

For example, if I had a question about a Jewish law, I would ask my rabbi

even though there are definitely reliable websites online

Because usually personal details are relevant

is that the case in Islamic law?

Yes, but if you don't have an Imam or Rabbie around which I think is the case more with muslims that Jews who live in mainly jewish communities and don't assimilate, then it is more convenient to ask on line.

@infatuated Don't Muslims also live primarily in Muslim communities?

Yes, but I meant in the West. I think muslims are more likely to assimilate than Jews. However that also depends how religious the person is. Cuz a religious muslim is simiarlly less likely to assimiliate.

@infatuated I have no idea of the numbers, but unfortunately, in the West, the vast majority of Jews are assimilated

Personal details, hmm, depends. But the most popular questions are more likely to already have rulings available.

@infatuated got it

I guess that makes sense, since Muslims pretty much believe in Divine law, and don't really have a category of laws created by scholars. Am I correct?

Hmm, but I think they still feel much closer based so many other factors. religion, culture or politics, shared economic interests. You jews hold most disproportional political and economic clout ;)

Like we have laws from God which are pretty much inflexible, and there are also rabbinic laws which often have some leeway depending on circumstances

@infatuated Perhaps, but the Jews who hold the political and economic clout are the assimilated ones

Hmm, I am not very much acquainted with the sunni law which belongs to the majority of muslims, but I know Shiite law is more flexible.

religious Jews are mostly fairly poor and distrusting of the political system

(of course that's a generality, not a rule)

True, but still not the politically-connected religious jews. I for example know of the Messianic Chabad Lubivich rabbinical organization which is very powerful.

Chabad Lubavitch*

@infatuated Sure, there are some politically connected Jews. My question, though, was whether asking online was considered a reliable way of getting information about Islamic law. Your answer was that Muslims in the west are more assimilated than Jews, but I just disputed that claim

I think that religious Muslims in the west are quite likely to live in or near a Muslim community

so don't they have someone to ask their questions to?

But still I believe even religious muslims are more likely to live/work in secular communities and environments.

And still, the convenience and speed of finding answers online makes it more favorable than locating the nearby Imam even if there is one nearby.

@infatuated Since when does convenience make something preferable to finding out the actual correct answer?

When there is both convenience and reliable online sources then it does. Because there are many scholarly credible websites.

@infatuated But personal details never enter into the equation?

It does, but I guess there are websites that address personal aspects as well.

And the fact that most questions are not very much bound by unique personal details for most questions would be on popular cases.

@Daniel from a personal armchair-psychology perspective, a lot of that is due to the anonymity of the Internet.

i reckon you'll find that most people asking these sorts of questions (e.g. sex) come from cultures where discussion of sex is considered taboo.

@goldPseudo I'm sure that's true. But as @infatuated said, it is something that is dealt with in sharia

and often the more conservative a religious community is, the less they encourage questioning things in general.

So I don't know what the attitude is like in those cultures, but how could asking a question about the proper course of action according to Islam be met with a negative response by a good leader?

yeah, but the fact that it is an issue that's dealt with sharia doesn't really overrule the fact that society doesn't talk about it, at least in the minds of the people asking these questions. social pressure alone can be overwhelming.

@goldPseudo So much so that people are unwilling to ask questions about Islamic law?

That seems crazy

and "tight" societies tend to put a lot more emphasis on appearing to fit into society than it does on asking legitimate sharia-based questions.

If you are truly a religious Muslim, you should want to know what the correct thing to do is

yeah, it's all sorts of crazy.

sadly, nobody ever said the world should make sense, nor the people living in it.

@goldPseudo My point is, that's not my experience of how the world works

going against social norms for religious knowledge is commendable, but also requires faith.

@goldPseudo But if you live in a religious community, then it shouldn't be against the social norm to ask questions to a competent scholar

@Daniel, But cultures and religion is intertwined and people tend to be influenced more by culture than religion, as @goldPseudo implies as well.

I'm not saying that people should go around talking about personal business in public

@Daniel true. but there's a fine line between "religious community" and "community made up of religious people"

@goldPseudo What's the distinction?

mostly, just because a community is made up of religious people doesn't mean that all the social constructs that community follows have any religious basis.

So maybe @infatuated was actually right when he said that the difference between Islam.SE and Judaism.SE is the number of adherents to the two religions around the world

which is especially problematic when people can't distinguish a religious practice from a merely cultural one.

Since the majority of religious Jews live in religious communities where it is accetable to ask a rabbi these types of questions

and encouraged

because "culture" tends to lump everything together as the same thing.

but maybe that's not the case for Muslims

i've seen any number of people who will say "this is Islam" but with absolutely no evidence beyond the fact that everyone just "knows" it is.

that I think is the point @Daniel. Jewish religious attitude is unique. How they are organized, how internally cohesive and supportive they are. How they reject any recourse to supra-organizational means of conduct, life etc.

so when you're in a community with, for example, a scholar who discourages certain questions (for whatever reason), it's easy to come away with an impression that Islam discourages those questions.

Jews have been historically famous for their strong religious/cultural organization.

@infatuated Perhaps. I would have thought the same held true for Muslims

Not because I know so

Just because I have a hard time imagining how a religion based on strict laws could survive otherwise

That's something that Judaism and Islam have in common

@Daniel laws rely on authority; it worked for years while there was an actual authority to implement those laws.

@Daniel, Not really. The muslim societal organization and harmony has been jeopardized since a long time ago. Muslims today lack a unified political and religious organization. But generally, any community that has such a supportive and warm organization either owes to its favorable socioeconomic conditions or the high care and benevolence of its leaders.

nowadays, you've got Muslims all over the world living in secular countries, who have no idea which "Islamic authority" they're even expected to follow. it's all sorts of confusing.

you got one "authority" saying such-and-such is halal, another "authority" saying it's haram.

@goldPseudo, exactly.

@goldPseudo Of course. We have that as well. That's why we have the concept of asking your personal rabbi

and why searching online doesn't work

that's why i'm so adamant about getting this site running so it promotes knowledge rather than dogma.

because otherwise you just have people squabbling about which authority is worth following, rather than giving each other the tools to actually learn about Islamic law.

so many Muslims are just lost without an authority to follow, which is why you end up with vague anonymous questions on the Internet instead of people actually, as you say, asking their personal rabbi imam.

@goldPseudo I don't follow

and follow him?

If they're lost without an authority to follow, why not attach themselves to an imam

If you force people to interpret all of the sources on their own, they are bound to make mistakes

because not everybody can be an expert

why should someone believe their personal imam, when random authority on the Internet says that he is the only true authority?

@goldPseudo Is there no concept of multiple truths?

basically, throw a random person in a room with three authorities, said random person likely lacks the ability to judge which one is "most correct".

@Daniel that depends on which authority you follow.

some say yes, some say no.

@goldPseudo Ahh. Now I'm understanding the root of the issue

I take that concept for granted

as do i.

It's 100% agreed upon by Jewish scholars

So if your local rabbi tells you to do something, and another rabbi on the internet says that thing is wrong, that internet rabbi would still agree that you should do what your rabbi told you

there's many scholars who do as well. Sunni jurisprudence has traditionally followed the "multiple truths" idea with jurisprudence, at least so long as those truths are based on agreed-upon methodologies.

@goldPseudo Right

there are always going to be wackos who just make stuff up

but there's growing schools of thought that basically insist that there is only one Truth (and that obviously they are the ones promoting it).

and that's where a lot of the confusion comes in.

@goldPseudo But when that happens, how does asking these questions on the internet alleve the confusion?

Now there are still all kinds of conflicting answers, but your also getting them from random internet people

never said it would. i mostly see these sorts of questions coming from people who lack the critical understanding to even parse what they're actually getting from the Internet.

which is one reason i've never been a fan of fatwa questions on this site.