Grand Ayatollah Says High Speed Internet Is "Against Moral Standards" 542
An anonymous reader writes A Grand Ayatollah in Iran has determined that access to high-speed and 3G Internet is "against Sharia" and "against moral standards." However, Iran's President, Hassan Rouhani, plans to renew licenses and expand the country’s 3G cellular phone network. A radical MP associated with the conservative Resistance Front, warned: “If the minister continues to go ahead with increasing bandwidth and Internet speed, then we will push for his impeachment and removal from the cabinet.” “We will vigorously prevent all attempts by the [communication] minister to expand 3G technology, and if our warnings are not heeded, then the necessary course of action will be taken,” he added.
If the Grand Ayatollah's against it.... (Score:5, Insightful)
...then there's got to be something to it.
Anything that wrests away control (Score:5, Insightful)
You already know they don't like this because it takes away their control over a population.
Of course they count it against their religion of control and abuse.
You have to define your premise... (Score:5, Insightful)
First... moral standards are "his" moral standards.
Second, internet in general connects his people to the world... exposing them to other view points that might distort their indoctrination to his world view.
So what he is saying is "the people of my country might not believe in my values if exposed to alternative view points."
Which is rational. They probably won't. His world view is pretty weak on logic, argument, or supporting evidence. Its just do what I say or the sharp knives come out.
Re:If the Grand Ayatollah's against it.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Stupid opinions based on violent fairy tale books, at that.
Re:I can't believe we're afraid of these assholes (Score:5, Insightful)
They aren't the only country wanting to remain in the 8th century, their are still supposedly modern countries that ban teaching or evolution and insist on teaching their kids at school creationism.
Re:If the Grand Ayatollah's against it.... (Score:5, Insightful)
HERETIC!
*Chops of "The New Guy's" head*
Respect my peaceful religion! OR ELSE!
Re:If the Grand Ayatollah's against it.... (Score:4, Insightful)
"isn't always right"
More like "is almost always wrong with few exceptions."
Re:If the Grand Ayatollah's against it.... (Score:4, Insightful)
The pope essentially said the same thing recently when he said that young people spend too much time on the Internet.
Religious leaders know that the survival of religion is being threatened by knowledge sharing on the internet, so it shouldn't be any surprise that they would speak out against it.
Re:If the Grand Ayatollah's against it.... (Score:5, Insightful)
The internet is especially threatening to the Religion of Peace, as it exposes them for who they really are.
Re:The key bit (Score:2, Insightful)
When you consider that the US sided with Saddam Hussein to contain Iran, you begin to realize that such things are possible.
Re:Anything that wrests away control (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:If the Grand Ayatollah's against it.... (Score:5, Insightful)
When has "fact" had anything to do with religious outrage?
Re:If the Grand Ayatollah's against it.... (Score:3, Insightful)
And WWW is not 666 either.
You might as well be saying the blue moon isn't blue for what it is worth. I mean the entire premise of the post was about misconceptions as the basis for a war against the internet.
Re:I can't believe we're afraid of these assholes (Score:0, Insightful)
Islam is by definition insanity; don't try and rationalize it. To do so would be a maddening endeavor.
Re:If the Grand Ayatollah's against it.... (Score:3, Insightful)
It has nothing to do with religion, they just want to keep the peoples in the dark age, so they can rule them.
Re: If the Grand Ayatollah's against it.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Control is the point of religion. In Christianity the first book gives a lessen of do as you're told.
Re:If the Grand Ayatollah's against it.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Backwards savages, wanting to remain backwards? (Score:0, Insightful)
Re:I can't believe we're afraid of these assholes (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I can't believe we're afraid of these assholes (Score:3, Insightful)
You don't need religion for that kind of insanity. Do some reading about the dechristianisation of France during the French Revolution. I'll wait.
Nasty, isn't it? Given the evidence, it's difficult to believe that ideological atheism won't lead to irrationality and bloodshed just as quickly and easily as any religion.
Re:The key bit (Score:4, Insightful)
I guess there's always a Greater Satan.
I can understand his way of thinking (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:If the Grand Ayatollah's against it.... (Score:5, Insightful)
It might be a generalization if it wasn't true. Been paying attention to the world lately, or did you miss the "religion of peace" committing genocide in Iraq.
Re:Maybe it would be good if the Ayatollah wins? (Score:5, Insightful)
http://atimes.com/atimes/Middl... [atimes.com]
Iran is the mess it is now (from our perspective) directly because the US fucked them over in 1953. We have a bunch of clueless myopic idiots who's first and only thought is to dump more weapons anywhere there's a problem in the world, without giving second thought to how that's come back to bite our asses time and time again. If we quit listening to these numb-nutted war neo-cons, maybe we wouldn't keep finding ourselves in bad situations decades later.... although with the whole Iraq/Afghanistan thing, it didn't even take decades.
Re:If the Grand Ayatollah's against it.... (Score:5, Insightful)
When has "fact" had anything to do with religious outrage?
Religious outrage, racist outrage, nationalist outrage. They are all equally stupid. I have had a long series of strange discussions with people of all these denominations about the building of a Mosque in my town. The argumentation goes that: "Do you know how many Churches there are in Saudi Arabia? Have you seen what they are doing to Christians in Iraq!?! We must ban mosques immediately to prevent this from happening here before the Moslems rise up and impose Sharia law on all of us!!!". Really? Says I, for one thing our moslems are a small and moderate minority; how are they supposed to impose Sharia law on us (Answer: Uhhhhhhhhmmmmm.... Uhhhh.... I just fear that they just will!). Secondly I find it interesting that you are implying that one can use the stupidity and cruelty of people in other countries to justify doing stupid and cruel things to innocent people in your own country? In that case did you notice what the Serbs did to Moslems in Bosnia? Did you notice what the white patriotic christian knights of the Ku Klux Klan did to African Americans, Latinos and other minorities in the USA? We must ban Christianity immediately!!! Remarkably enough they considered equating all moslems with ISIS and banning Islam to be a reasonable and natural thing to do (even though the local moslem community is just about the most peaceful and law abiding group of people in our country) but they went absolutely apeshit when I applied their own logic to Christianity. It got even funnier when I pointed out that both the Serbs and the Ku Klux Klan are white and perhaps we should ban white people since most of the people involved in this discussion including my self were white. I just find it endlessly fascinating how the minds of these people work. They keep citing the Constitution when it supports their point of view but then they want to ban Moslems from practicing their religion, ban immigration of non-whites or put gay people in jail for offending christian fanatics everywhere by existing the Constitution can apparently be ignored.
Re:If the Grand Ayatollah's against it.... (Score:4, Insightful)
they don't teach facts, they teach opinions.
They don't teach facts at law schools either, they teach legal opinions.
They try to teach you how to reason & argue & back up your opinion with facts. Which is a little different then saying "on page 392 of the holy book God himself said X, that's it, end of story".
Re:If the Grand Ayatollah's against it.... (Score:4, Insightful)
The ones fighting are a tiny percentage of muslims though.
Actively fighting? Probably. That's usual in war. Supporting the fight against the goons? A vast percentage. Like Joe Average, Ahmed Average just wants a quiet life, and only gets into heated disputes about the merits of the local football teams. And narrow-minded Koran thumpers are just as bad for such a quiet life as narrow-minded Bible thumpers.
The fact is a percentage of muslim inman are indirectly supporting the IS through sharing similar beliefs about sharia law.
Funny how you left out `tiny' before `percentage' here. You don't really belief that this percentage is large, do you?
Re:I can't believe we're afraid of these assholes (Score:3, Insightful)
How does it fail to address your point?
I'm an atheist. I also don't believe in unicorns.
I don't campaign against unicorns. I don't really care if YOU believe in unicorns.
Yes, I think you're wasting a whole lot of time, money, and energy believing in something there is no evidence for.
If you start trying to convince me to believe in unicorns, I will debate it with you.
If you start trying to force me to live as though unicorns were real, I will fight you.
If you start chopping off the heads of people who don't believe in unicorns, I think you must be stopped. Not because of your beliefs. Because of your actions.
Re:If the Grand Ayatollah's against it.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Except no...a little Googling shows that first mention of the number is in a widely distributed book from 2nd century Christian author Irenaeus, who affirms that the number is 666, and mentions some texts with the wrong number. The only evidence for 616 is an old papyrus from the 3rd century. It may be the oldest known copy of the book of Revelations, but it wasn't the original copy, the text was written 150 years earlier. Furthermore, papyrus was valuable and was often re-used, so it may not even be the oldest known version of Revelations.
In order to prove that the original number was 616, one would have to find either the original version of the text, or a large number of texts (from various locales) which wrote 616, or perhaps have a well-regarded and well-preserved early Christian author like Irenaeus or Augustine say that the actual number was 616.
Re:If the Grand Ayatollah's against it.... (Score:1, Insightful)
When has "fact" had anything to do with religious outrage?
Why don't we ask the atheist communists that imprisoned, tortured, and murdered people for going to church?
Re:If the Grand Ayatollah's against it.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Why don't we ask the atheist communists that imprisoned, tortured, and murdered people for going to church?
You mean like the righteous Christians who have done the same thing to tens of thousands for going to the wrong church? Try not to lead with your chin like that. It takes all the sport out of it.