They don’t mind sharia law as long as it’s their christian nationalist flavor of it.
They’re cool with the christian caliphate.
Fitting alliteration, that.
This is the reason they went along with the George W Bush administration when they started the 9th Crusades which we experience today.
Y’all Qaeda
The criticism is mostly jealousy.
So if they aren’t adhering to the Constitution, then why should they keep benefiting from any part of it? Why should they even be part of the Union?
I would be fucking FURIOUS if I was a tax payer in Texas. What a shithole.
Plot twist: Texas is kicked out of the Union before it gets independence
Hey, make them take Louisiana, FL, and Alabama. Let them carry those deadbeats a while and see how they like it.
I’m ready for Shakira law whenever, wherever.
At least hips don’t lie.
Wouldn’t it be nice to separate religion from the government
No, that’s an awful idea. Why would anyone do that?! It’s not like it’s literally enshrined in the constitution or anything.
Oh the government wants to separate religion from government. They want to make government the religion.
Can’t have separation when they’re the same thing taps head
There’s nothing better for turning Christians into atheists than making them actually read the Bible. I approve.
They’ll be selectively read to. American kids can’t actually read well these days, and this will do nothing to change that.
Insert if them kids could read meme.
Yeah its ironic that the actual teachings of jesus and the gospel are about as far from Christo-fascism as one can be.
AFAIK they won’t read the Bible directly, they’ll read excerpts. So basically Republicans are curating only the parts they think fit their needs and are leaving out context that could completely flip the lesson on its head.
The teachings of Jesus are extremely woke at the same time. “Loving everyone unconditionally”, “not caring if someone’s doing religion wrong or thinking differently”?
In my Texas high school, many decades ago now, my English teacher made us read the bible, saying that it was only for its literary and historical value. It had nothing to do with how she was an extremely religious Mormon.
Apparently.
At least it wasn’t the official curriculum. Just her being an awful human.
Why didn’t you read the book of Mormon?
That’s a sound logical argument that immediately exposes her hypocrisy, and it didn’t occur to me to bring it up back then.
I totally would have, though. She caused a lot of problems due to her poor and biased teaching. I never understood the purpose of English classes back then, so I always asked a lot of questions that inevitably made her look bad. By the end of that class, she absolutely hated me and was marking my assignments worse than other people’s, even when the criteria was purely objective. My father had to schedule a meeting with the Principal to get her to stop.
Or maybe she didn’t teach the Book of Mormon partially because it obviously has zero literary merit. Every passage from it that I’ve read sounds like a person with an eighth grade education who is trying to sound like the King James version of the bible. I mean, “smite” (or smote) is a cool sounding word for a middle schooler, so a middle schooler who was trying to write a new book of the bible might use that word way more often than makes sense.
Closer?
That is literally Sharia law (at least what bigots think sharia law is)
So not literally? Words matter.
I’m all over this post correcting. It’s not for them, it’s for hopefully us. Messaging matters, words matter.
Tighten it the fuck up.
if Sharia law refers to religious laws made by religious fundamentalists, then it’s literally true
It doesn’t; Sharia is the body of Islamic religious law drawn from the Quran and the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad.
While “Sharia law” is a set of religious laws, arguably made by fundamentalists, that doesn’t make all religious laws made by fundamentalists “Sharia law.” You’re free to say it’s “just like” or “analogous to,” but the contention here is that it would be in everyone’s best interest if we respected the meanings of words - including “literally.” A Ford Focus is not literally a Toyota Corolla, though they are both sedans. In many ways, though, a Ford Focus is like a Toyota Corolla.
tl;dr “Sharia law” refers to the body of Islamic religious law drawn from the Quran and the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad, not any religious laws made by religious fundamentalists. Respecting words is a matter of respect for the subjects and fosters respect for the speaker.
Not a hill I am willing to die in.
But the way Sharia law is usually misused it might as well refer to religious based laws and policing, rather than specifically muslim.
Language is that flexible.
Plus, it is fun when the most Islamophobic and racist people are the ones pushing Sharia law the hardest.
Religious fundamentalists making laws is terrible regardless of religion.
What is the sharia law that bigots are not aware of?
Most of it. They barely read their own religious text, much less anyone else’s.
Yeah, well at least it’s not some Middle Eastern religion, with funny hats and a sacred book, that builds big towers to noisily advertise itself to the people around it…
That worships the same god.
slow clap
It’s wild that Texas even wants to mandate a reading list at the state level. Aren’t there just simple regional differences to account for?
I wouldn’t expect a school in San Diego to mandate reading John Steinbeck whose stories are mainly set in Central and Northern California for example.
I actually grew up in Central California and both Grapes of Wrath and East of Eden were required reading for us in junior/high school
Well they can’t spread their Christian Nationalism (Nat-C) ideology far and wide if they keep it regional.
And if you’re using tax payer dollars to violate the Constitution, why not go big?
This can’t be real. Tell me this isn’t real.
I fucking hate it here
Make them hate it here
They already do. That’s why they keep aggressively breaking the law to try to force the government to be what they want it to be.
But yes, make them miserable. If you don’t want to live in a secular country you can emmigrate
If it helps, the rest of the world hate your country too.
I mean the pro is if they actually read the Bible maybe they’ll realize its not all anti everything, and stop using it out of context. Actually care about others?
There’s a dangerous difference between critical bible analysis and guided bible study.
With how cryptic it is and how heavy on metaphors and parables, interpretation and contextualisation are important aspects of actually understanding the text, and the context sometimes isn’t directly in the text but in the environment (time, place, recent events, social group) it was written in, or in other texts the writers expected their peers to be familiar with.
Critical analysis needs to investigate and consider thay extra-textual context. Guided study can explain it, but it can also omit or twist it. Critical analysis shouldn’t just pick out individual passages. Guided study can cherry-pick the parts I want you to read.
For example, consider the story of the good Samaritan: A guy gets robbed, beaten half dead and left in the ditch. Two priests walk by and ignore him. Then another guy (the titular Samaritan) comes by, helps him, cleans his wounds and pays for an inn to take care of him. The whole thing is told in response to the question “if I’m supposed to love my neighbour, who is my neighbour?”
I could frame it as Jesus telling that Rabbi “neighbour means peers, and the priests walking by had no obligation to help the peasant because he’s not their peer; let the rabble take care of each other and worry about your own”. I could also, however, point out that Samaritans and Jews had a religious conflict, oil and wine weren’t as cheap as they would be today and two full days labourers’ wages are not a sum of money to sneeze at. In that context, the point isn’t about peers and obligations but about how this guy helped a potential enemy at some expense, because that’s who you’re supposed to love: People whose humanity transcends borders, religious enmity and personal profit.
So depending on how I spin it, I can use it to encourage division and elitism, or to tell you that Muslim immigrants deserve your kindness and help too.
This is a bit of an extreme example (I hope; though I wouldn’t be surprised to learn otherwise), but having been in “bible study”, I can tell you that there absolutely are people willing and able to make the text fit their agenda quite convincingly.
I have zero faith thay this will actually be reading the bible critically so much as cherry-picked indoctrination.
“The devil can cite scripture for his purpose.”
:(
I am strongly against pushing any religion to anyone. This is fucked up.
Cherry picked parts of the book spiced with conservative lies being stuffed into young minds is pure evil.
But if they actually managed to get the kids read the entire book, that could be a good thing. I read the Bible out of curiosity when I was in school and it was the most effective inoculation against theism I can think of.
but it’s “our flavor of sharia law so it’s good”.
Oklahoma was all set to hand out the Trump Bibles, at full retail cost of $60 per. But they got talked down from that.
Oklahoma also has an anti-establishment clause stronger than the one in the US constitution. That would have probably helped get in the way.
As an aside, the guy in the picture seems so awfully familiar.
All it takes is the Insurrection Act, to force this shit on all 50.
The Christan Taliban are rather active in the US.
