Unnatural Selection

April Rose · Post by **April Rose** » Fri Jun 17, 2011 10:37 pm

You stop being a muslim in the same way that I stopped being a catholic. You do it in your heart. If you happen to be in a country where that group is in power, you may have problems. But that is a political issue. It has nothing to do with your soul.

Ralitsa · Post by **Ralitsa** » Sat Jun 18, 2011 3:26 pm

A very interesting thread. I will only say to all of this, that it is completely changing. I agree with Carolyn that these issues are all decades old and it's not really a serious problem. But I very much disagree with the notion that it will have little effect.
In fact, the shortage of women in China and India is a very big problem for the potential husbands. Women are now holding out for more power and authority in the relationship. And because they are much better educated than the previous generation, and cannot realistically be considered "just another mouth to feed" when they provide a substantial fraction of the family's income, they do not have to accept a subservient position. This attitude is not quite widespread yet, but it's growing very fast. This attitude is also growing in the middle east. All of the recent demonstrations had women as significant figures in the action. These women, who faced tanks and machine guns, are not going home now to become baby machines for their husbands.
What this translates into, is that in most of the region the fertility ratios of the current generation of women will be very much lower than in the last generation. So this region will start to see what happend to Europe in the '60s and '70s, strong economic growth, rapid ascension of women in positions of power, plummeting childbirths, etc. At some point there will be some changes in culture as well.
On the subject of arranged mariages, I think maybe they're not such a bad idea. I did a lousy job of picking my spouse, and I'm convinced my parents could have done a lot better.

Absaroka · Post by **Absaroka** » Sat Jun 18, 2011 10:43 pm

I suspect that in countries where rich men can have many wives it probably leaves poor men frustrated, searching for an enemy, and far more willing to be cannon fodder.

As for stopping being a Muslim, it all depends on where you live. You can stop here just as April Rose says. In some other countries you may need to pretend you still believe.

But the real truth is that folks in groups like the Taliban stopped being Muslims a very long time ago as they stopped following many of the teachings of Islam. Same as the members of that infamous "Christian" group, the KKK, stopped being Christians sometime before they joined the Klan, no matter what the Klan said about being Christian.

Anthony Simon · Post by **Anthony Simon** » Sat Jun 25, 2011 1:16 pm

Here's something I found from 1992:

The problems of life begin early for the Indian girl, before birth indeed now that amniocentesis can determine for the sufficiently affluent urban parent whether the precious son, or merely another unwanted daughter, is about to be born. Despite official efforts to stop sex-related abortions, aborted foetuses remain overwhelmingly female. Among the poorer classes, girl babies are sometimes killed at birth, but are more often neglected to a degree which ensures that fewer of them survive to reach maturity than boys. The ratio of women to men in the Indian population has been declining since the turn of the century, standing now, according to the 1991 census, at 93 women to 100 men (in the UK it is 105 women to 100 men, and in sub-Saharan Africa 102 women to 100 men).

This is from a book review by Kathryn Tidrick in the LRB. There's some more at http://www.lrb.co.uk/v14/n11/kathryn-ti ... ges-mother, though I think then entire article requires payment.

It seems like the situation has got worse in India since 1992 and it had already, according to the above, being going downhill since ca 1900. So that's around a century or so. Given that, I'm not so sure this is going to turn out to be a blip after all.