Every sect has it's truth, every truth has it sect, every sect has extremists. Don't judge an entire culture or creed, by the deeds of a few fanatics.

As a muslim, I'm very angry to read some thing like this. Only Allah (God) can and will punish those who do wrong because only he knows the truth. The Kuran says that no one has the right to take the life of another. The stonning to death and other punishments were supose to be used to insert fear into rapest, thieves, murderers.....ect. 'An eye for an eye', is also used to make people think twice befor doing wrong. The religion gets blemed because in some part of the world people tend to mix religion and culture. The problem is that you have to be very good at translating the Kuran and sometimes they translate it wrong. The religion is Islam which means peace and I erge people to read it because it will answer many questions people might have about the religion. My religion also tells me to obey the laws and regulations of the city or the country I live in.
Going back to the topic, I thinks that this woman should not be stoned to death and I hope there is something that could be done about it.

By the way, I hope more people get to vist this web site and get chance to think for themself rather that getting it onle one view.

Best Regards,


Abdul.

IN fairness the Koran can be translated/intrepreted many ways, depending on how closely you pay attention to symbolism. The christian church has commited attrocites throughout its history too, and what you said...about it being the followers of a religion, rather than religion itself being the cause of such problems is also true.

However, whilst western muslims tend to follow islam as a faith, many muslim states in africa and a few in the middle east apply the most strict, and often barbaric interpretation of the koran. These are not a minority either. Also those muslim states that are more tolerant, such as Egypt, only remain so because they are undemocratic. The minute they became democratic, ultra orthodox clerics would gain power and impose the sort of government we have seen in Afghanistan.

The only way this is going to ever sort itself out, is if muslims themselves, stand up to the ultra orthodox amongst their communities and leaderships and teach them the concept of tolerance, respect for women etc.


The second copy of this post was caused by a error with the indy media server.

funny how you connotate xtian extremism, with zionism and Islam.

two variants of a faith, xtian extremism et zionism, with Islam.

anarch, you're either far too conditioned to notice your gaff, or you connotated the three voluntarily as to prove your inept, blatantly uninformed position.

islam, christianity and judaism when properly practiced are peaceful. history attests to this truism, though, its the militarization of these philosophies, coupled with stoic oppurtinism that "hijacks" these faiths.

in regards to the above article, pakistan's rural areas have for centuries practiced draconian rituals mainly by tribal misogynists who subjugate primarily women in order to keep their cheiftain positions upon the tribes.
it has the slightest to do with islamic thought.

the article alludes (no doubt it was the posters' intention) to portray islamic doctrine in an undeserving fashion. purely racist disinformation unworthy of a proper response.
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in dealing with the problem at hand, the usa whose ties to pakistan lie in an oligarchical scope, should pressure general musharaf's illegitimate govt to exert his govt's law to the tribal areas that function as rural semi autarchies.

West African Countries like Senegambia, Mauritania and Mali, practice thee MOST peaceful tenets of Islam in the World, tolerant of Christians and Animists alike.

Strict Sharia Laws are being imported, as in Nigeria, because oppression and violation of human rights makes the Corporate Global Coup easy and incites atrocities.

All of these countries have puppet Presidents who are either paid or bombed by the US to keep the people in permanent feudalism.

The essence of Islam is hospitality, that's been their Achilles' heel, because they trusted the US.

(I'm not bringing this to make any point other than that Islam can go on and on about being a religion of Peace, and it can be, I've read the Qur'an, Hadit and commentaries, and there is plenty of peaceful stuff in there, but theres also plenty of violent stuff, and its up to the ruling powers to interpret it as they wish. My friend's grandfather was hung in the centre of his village in Iraq because he was Jewish, and it was justified by the Qur'an. Christianity and Judaism also have some violent stuff in their holy books, witness the Crusades and Inquisition, but modern Judaeo-Christian countries do not practice them, or reinterpret them to fit the times. Islamic countries must do the same.)

"Before the Jewish state was established,
there existed nothing to harm good relations
between Arabs and Jews. "
-- The late King Faisal of Saudi Arabia,
November 1973, to Henry Kissinger

"We are not against the Jews.
On the contrary, we are all Semites
and we have been living with each
other in peace and fraternity, Muslims,
Jews and Christians, for many centuries."
-Yasser Arafat, head of the PLO

Contrary to the myth that Jews lived in harmony with the Arabs before the Zionist state, innumerable authoritative works document decisively the subjugation, ppression, and spasmodic anti-Jewish eruptions of violence that darkened the existence of the Jews in Muslim Arab countries.

In truth, before the seventh-century advent of the Prophet Muhammad and Islam, Jews and Arabs did have harmonious relations, and words of praise regarding the noble virtues of the Jews may be found in ancient Arab literature

Omar, the caliph who succeeded Muhammad, delineated in his Charter of Omar the twelve laws under which a dhimmi, or non-Muslim, was allowed to exist as a "nonbeliever" among "believers." The Charter codified the conditions of life for Jews under Islam -- a life which was forfeited if the dhimmi broke this law. Among the restrictions of the Charter: Jews were forbidden to touch the Koran; forced to wear a distinctive (sometimes dark blue or black) habit with sash; compelled to wear a yellow piece of cloth as a badge (blue for Christians); not allowed to perform their religious practices in public; not allowed to own a horse, because horses were deemed noble; not permitted to drink wine in public; and required to bury their dead without letting their grief be heard by the Muslims.

As a grateful payment for being allowed so to live and be "protected," a dhimmi paid a special head tax and a special property tax, the edict for which came directly from the Koran: "Fight against those [Jews and Christians] who believe not in Allah ... until they pay the tribute readily, being brought low."

In addition, Jews faced the danger of incurring the wrath of a Muslim, in which case the Muslim could charge, however falsely, that the Jew had cursed Islam, an accusation against which the Jew could not defend himself Islamic religious law decreed that, although murder of one Muslim by another Muslim was punishable by death, a Muslim who murdered a non-Muslim was given not the death penalty, but only the obligation to pay "blood money" to the family of the slain infidel. Even this punishment was unlikely, however, because the law held the testimony of a Jew or a Christian invalid against a Muslim, and the penalty could only be exacted under improbable conditions-when two Muslims were willing to testify against a brother Muslim for the sake of an infidel.

[...]

It was from such a climate that the Jews had escaped, seeking refuge in Israel.

It didn't give the British the right to hand it over to Zionists after Muslims had ruled it in unbroken succession for 1,500 years.

"Jew" "Muslim" "Christian".... On and on it goes, we divide ourselves, create new categories to fight over, find differences, disagree. These 3 religions are hardly distinguishable, all patriarchical religions based on authoritarianism, sexism, homophobia and racism. The first ever recorded case of genocide? Well didn't "God" tell the jews to smite the cananites when the left the land of Egypt? More people have been killed in the name of christianity, and the christians are probably largely responsible for the oppressive culture now existing in islamic countries thanks to the crusades. And, whatever any Muslim says about their peaceful religion, I doubt they would put bets on me (a pierced up dyke) lasting 10 minutes in most islamic countries.
Until we learn tolerance and acceptance of other people who are different the world will never be a happy place. Unfortunately most people who peddle these religions are power hungry selfish people using whatever is available to control other people. This is what happens. Power corrupts, and religion gives people power in a most disturbing way. Until we drop all these pointless definitions and realise that we are all beautiful people living on a beautiful planet who just need to love each other, cooperate, and have fun. Nothing is important enough to treat people the way that people are treated by christians, jews, muslims, in the name of religion. The world needs tolerance, healing and love. Forget about if the person next to you is a jew, muslim, yuppy or queer, they are your sister or brother. If we do not move forward on these lines quickly it will be too late for the human race to survive. We are conditioned to abuse each other, compete, disrespect. But if we just let go of our conditioning, our "religion" (be it capitalism,islam,or whatever you believe in) and listen to what we really feel inside ourselves, our connections with the earth, our natural environment, and each other, does the world have any chance of survival. Don't you see these patterns and cycles of oppression and pain? We are all one race, one nation, one religion. Do we really need to look that far to see that god is everything, destruction and creation, that is natural to this planet. There is nothing natural about the way that religious people condition their children, try and make their children feel guilty about everything so that they can control them. It is pretty disgusting really, whether or not these people know what they are doing. If people choose to be a religion thats great but it's a personal choice and the minute you start to force it onothers misery follows. We all have inside ourselves the knowledge and sense of right and wrong we need to live in peace and harmony. Religions cause a lot more pain and suffering than they ever prevent.