Facts, Truth, and Values

Facts, Truth, and Values

The video about prostitution in Iran was disturbing. So was the
earlier news report about forced early marriages for women in Yemen.
The comments about the insitutionalized oppresion of women by
Islam was disturbing, too, at least to me, because I wonder if the
comments are truly valid. Facts are the surface reality; truth is the
deeper reality. To get to truth, we have to look for the "Why" and the
"How" , and should not content ourselves with the "What" (happened).

I don't claim to be an expert on Islam, but based on what I understand
about it and the long glory (almost 1,000 years) it enjoyed and its
continuing expansion and the fervor among its believers, I would think
there has to be something meaningful and relevant about it. Before we
jump to the facille conclusion about the "evils" of Islam, based on
its apparent oppression of women, we need to investigate if the
practice indeed does occur due to the explicit teachings and the
dogmas of the faith, and not to the ever-presence of poverty, and the
hangover of ancient tribal customs dictated by socioeconomic factors.

As regards prostitution in Iran, as it happens everywhere else, the
primary cause for its occurrence is economic necessity for survival.
We must not forget the West are imposing a suffocating trade embargo
on Iran. I also wonder if Iran has fully recovered from its
devastating war for survival with Iraq. Still, based on what I read,
Iran seems to be doing OK, and not a failed state teetering on
collapse. Every society has its ugly side of underbelly. We can go to
Vietnam and film stomach-churning scenes of abject poverty. We can do
the same thing in the States. The question must be whether these
scenes are omnipresent or not.

One woman in the video complained bitterly that she found it ironic
she had to have sex with the local chief of religious police. He did
pay her for her service, by the way. What did she expect about men?
Most are slaves of their biological urges and morally weak when it
comes to sex. Men have sex with prositutes or commit adultery, not
necessarily because they don't love their wives anymore, but because
they like fresh new sexual experiences, a vital requirement in the
past for the propagation of the human species and still throbs and
lurks strongly in men with healthy sexual appetite.

I myself recently wrote something about Islam. I did that to counter the increasingly strident Western press and to pexprress my personal and sympathetic views of Islam although I am an atheist and find Buddhism more personally satisfying, intellectually.

I would love to see Vietnamese intellectuals, spending more time and resources to think and ponder and become restless and develop a sense of urgency to do something about the pending, imminent annexation of Vietnam by Red China. That was what I
had in mind when I included the word "Values" in the heading of this
post.