Its all good bud...We've known from day one that those Sauds are full of Shi'ite :P

And if you think thats bad, their take on us Jewish guys aint so hot either!

BUT WHY WOULD THEY PUNISH HER AND NOT THE RAPIST WHAT GOING ON!! HOW IS THAT JUSTICE???

A lot of it has to do with the perception that because it was the woman who was responsible for the Original sin...that women are inherently evil. That is why they are forced to cover themselves up in berka's and whatnot.

Because if a woman shows parts of herself, or in this case rides in a car with males that are not her relatives..then she is seducing them and the men cannot be held responsible for thier actions when tempted by such an evil person. Its her fault she tempted them into raping her.

Oh I see...........mmm wel never the less that doesnt make it right but hey nothing i can do right?

also i forgot to thank you for the info thanks!>#3

Me mum (a wise woman) shakes her head over this one of course. What sort of wimpy suck can't control themselves at the sight of an ankle? Not very strong and manly isn't it? Should start mocking them for that. Poor little wimpy sissy-boys can't look at titty! Aww, isn't that special!

Good idea! Real men can control their urges. The rapists are nothing but immature spoiled spoiled brats. Actually, I hope that the victim is rich enough to hire a hitman... Or slip a gram of tasteless odorless diethylstilbesterol into their food, which would result in permanent chemical castration.

I agree... unfortunately they dont see it that way

I still shudder about those two male teens that were hanged in Iran because they were gay!~

Murdered in front of an enthusiastically cheering crowd...

In all honesty, without wanting to be an asshole or anything: I consider religion as bs. We don't really accept Christian or Jewish values in our societies, we just accepto those rites and practices that we've gotten used to, and that by no means abide exactly by the bible. If one would just read the bible, and then think about a scenario, in which we would follwo every rule in it, we wouldn't be any different from radical islamists. The fact simply is, that the eastern world, if I may call it like that, lags behind in developmet, which isn't only reflected in high birth rates etc. but also to the prevalence and power that religion still has over the people. Normally, the influence of religion declines as a country develops, but unfortunately, the radicals often find many ways to stay in power. And because of tragic events in the past, like the holocaust, we are often almost forced to accept all kinds of "values", in order to not be labeled as intolerant, especially if the country is allied with us.

But seriously, the scenario you've described somehow resembles the situation in Margaret Atwood's "A Handmaids Tale", with the women being at fault when she was raped. Twisted views some people have there...

Like I said, I don't want to bring up a discussion about religion in general, but scenarios like these somehow show, that religion often causes more problems than its supposed to solve.

Yes, the Old Testament calls for death by stoning for those who eat pork or shellfish. Lets see - last night, I had ham and smoked oysters for dinner, and if that isn't bad enough, how about my love for tailhole yiffery... World War IV is ongoing, and will get a lot deadlier when the Iranian fundamentalist mullahs get nuclear weapons. Believe them when they say that they are on a mission from Allah to destroy both the Little Satan (Isreail) and the Great Satan (U.S.). About 60,000,000,000 people were murdered because most people were unwilling to believe that Stalin and Hitler meant what they said.

Don't forget that cotton/polyester mixed shirt you're wearing. Sinner! HELL!
People who know they're right scare me.

"A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider to be God-fearing and pious."
-- Aristotle, 343 B.C.

"The whole problem with the world is that the fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people are full of doubts. Many people would sooner die then think; in fact they do so."
- Bertrand Russell

"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities."
- Voltaire

Arrgh! My shirt has betrayed me!! I'd completely forgotten about that one.
Fine quotes.

It's kind of freeing though isn't it, knowing that you're already damned to hell three ways from Sunday. Makes adding on one more sin kinda easy. Can't wait for Friday, I'm gonna eat a hot-dog as usual thus violating the dietary restrictions of five major religions.

Good idea! Invite a friend over and lick each other's hot dogs to add a few more points.

Nice quotations! Thanks for those.

\"The ability to quote is a serviceable substitute for wit.\"
- W. Somerset Maugham

\"Um.... what? Oh right, never mind.\"
- Atomicat

i eat this on Yom Kippur, it also pisses off PeTa
http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a.....d/IM004293.jpg

Yum yum! And I mix milk, bacon, and eggs in the same pan to make an omlette, which especially naughty...

You are just a WILD MAN!

Worse yet, I'm a fox-horse-human hybrid/chimera. The hybridazation part is especially fun!
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/392678/
That would get me stoned to death over there. If I remember correctly, the first witchcraft trial and execution in English speaking North America was of a teenage boy caught doing exactly that.

I'm a Chimera :D for real.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rituximab
i got these in my body :D
Creationists really hate me

The Creationists will hate chimeras until they are dying from lymphoma and chimerically created antibodies are their only hope. Then suddenly everything is different... There is a lot of commercial research being done on sheep-human chimeras; you may be interested in the reference links in the story below this image - furrys already exist:
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/495166/

Sad thing is, that people are still killed or otherwise mistreated because they don't believe in what dictators say, no matter whether its of a religious nature or not. I just generally think that nowadays, religion has lost its meaning. While it may have been intended to stop people from killing each other all the time, and thereby enabling a functioning society (as everyone was scared that the big bearded magic man will smack them, once they die, if they do in fact kill each other). But as with all nice ideas, such as kommunism for example, it just doesn't work out, as someone has to put himself on top, and decide whats right or wrong, like certain popes and mullahs like to do it. Even when there isn't a ruler or anything like that in place, extreme believers will always believe that their views is the only correct one, as some of the interesting points of Atomicat point out. If you want to believe in god, go ahead, I don't mind. But don't force schools to teach "intelligent design" instead of biology, don't always stand in the way of science, when we want to use it to learn more about our surrounding, and by all meanst don't do such s*it as certain people do to women. It really is a bit strange that all the journal is about takes place in our time, in our world right now. And I thought that we'd left the middle ages behind us...

I have to agree with you that the bible contains rules of a nature that barbarians would be accustomed to, so yeah, don't take it that seriously.

And about WWwhatever: Lets just hope that IF they do or will posess nuclear arms, and IF they really are that crazy to believe that they are fulfilling allah's mission, that they will know the fact that if they shoot their rockets, everyone else will also shoot theirs, so everything will be bombed to hell. Lets just hope that this cold war style fear of complete destruction will keep things from going out of control until the people in charge there come to their senses.

The Soviets were atheists and could be deterred by a credible threat of massive thermonuclear retaliation. If we are very lucky, all the big cheese Iranian mullas and their Imanutjob "President" are total hippocrits, liars, and atheists, too. I really don't think that we are that fortunate. They say that armageddon is what they want. If they really believe that heaven is a whorehouse, we are screwed because deterrence won't work, and multimegadeaths will be inevitable.

That's not Islam. It's probably a custom/law from BEFORE Islam existed that they use Islam to justify.

It's hard to define exactly what is Islam. Is it just the Qur'an, or do you include the Sunnah? What about the Commentaries of the 12 Imams? And then there are regional variants, because religion is nothing if not open to interpretation by the biggest asshole with the biggest axe to grind. Most of what we see as the excesses of Sharia are the extremism of Wahabism, which is an export wholly manufactured in Saudi Arabia. Since "Islam" (and for that matter, God, Allah, Zeus, The Flying Spaghetti Monster, etc) is a human concept open to individual interpretation, the difference between what "is" and "isn't" Islam depends on how good an argument you can bring.

True. My point was Deathpuppy's blaming the incident and others like it on "Islam," when in truth, if it's even connected with religious doctrine, and not just using it as an excuse, it's just the interpretation of a certain set of people, and not the whole of those who follow the religion.

Then there is her lawyer, a male, who has been charged and will probably be disbarred for making the media aware of this bit of Saudi justice. If it is so just, why are they ashamed to have it known?

His disbarment was announced this morning. Seig Heil! - oops - I mean Praise Allah!

same difference...you can throw in \"Praise Jesus\" too.

He that doeth evil hateth the light. ;)

:(
That is all.

Well put.

treatment of women in Islam, especially the Taliban, is perhaps the one thing that actually makes me grimace with a tear. this is not easy to do.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taliba.....tment_of_women

Yeah, this is the thing that is so frustrating. I regard all religions as essentially equal, myself--I don't believe in any of them. But some aspects of the different faiths are just outright wrong, and I not only disagree with them but believe they should be fought on the grounds of basic human rights.

Remember that the Christians, too (in some of the more flat-headed denominations) also place women as second-class citizens. And, of course, they ALL regard homosexuals as third-class citizens...

But the way the Muslim world treats women is specifically offensive...on basic human grounds.

No, homosexuals aren't regarded as third class citizens; they are regarded as unclean vermin who must be eradicated.

You can't expect to love every religion. Pain unto another human being is wrong no matter what your fucking tradition is. You are an asshole regardless.

True--religion is only a convenient excuse. The Golden Rule is the only concept religion has ever come up with that has truly universal social merit--and it has nothing to do with God. ;) But you are right--injustice is injustice, whatever it's basis.

Unfortunately, the Golden Rule has too many loopholes... called the rest of the Bible, or the rest of the Koran, or any other rule/history book people worship.

It always steams me so much to see such religion-based ignorance. I know it's their ways, but honestly it makes me want to sentence the idiots who enforce such things to 5000 lashes delivered by a mine-clearing flail.

We Muslims don't do that in Malaysia, though.

**nods** Note that it's the Taliban idiocy being discussed, not Muslims in general. As I understand it, though, isn't the true face of the Muslim face a passive and peace-loving one? Just looking for clarification from a Muslim who isn't a fucked-in-the-head extremist like the Taliban nutjobs.

Looking back, I think what prompted me to post what I did was reading this bit in the journal: We're expected to accept Islamic ways and traditions ... in our enlightened society...but barbarism is barbarism.

I struggle every day in my contacts online with the fact that most people's conception of Islam is shaped by what is expressed in barbaric societies. Islam is not just in the Middle East, it is also found as far the multicultural South-East Asia and as close as Islamic communities in the United States. What most of the world understands as "Islam" disturbs me; either for its inaccuracy, or its ignorance of variation.

I live in Malaysia, and despite being an "Islamic" nation in the eyes of the media, there is plenty of interplay between various religions (Hindu, Buddhist, Sikh, etc.) and Islamic legislation is kept in check with constitutional rights.

I am a grad doing work on gene sequencing, and I am also a Furry artist, and despite personal complexity, I still identify myself as Muslim because if I don't, then there'll only be simple-minded zealots to do so.

All religions will express a total sum of both ugly barbarism and progressive enlightenment, as per the people who embrace them and how they interpret its tenets in the context of their culture. Islam is having a lot of trouble putting forward its progressive, modern face when its violent, blood-painted, trigger-happy face continues to capture public attention.

That's very true--the extreme element of any group will always rate the most newsprint. A good example is the furry community being viewed by the general public as sex perverts in costumes. Of course, I think any outfit that thinks of themselves as progressive should be out there denouncing their extremist fringe elements.

Just like every Christian in this country should be working to silence Phelps.

*stands holding paw in air* SECONDED!!!

STRANGE.

I can only pray countries like that will reform themselves eventually, because people aren't going to stand by and let stuff like that happen forever.

Religious freedom is a must, but religion must also be kept out of government, for reasons such as this.

Personally speaking, any "Religion" that seeks to subvert or enslave or destroy an entire class of people is wrong. I don't care who you are. Even Christianity does this. Catholicism especially, I was raised Southern Baptist, so I know how subversive they are, though they try to be subtle about it. Why do you think policies in America give preferential treatment? Based on Christian ideals from day 1. That's why Women had to fight for their rights, that's why non-whites had to fight for their rights. Not just blacks and former slaves, but Native Americans, anyone that wasn't a White Christian Male had to fight for equality, and they're still fighting for it.

Oh, there has been a lot of progress in this area, but there are still overt signs of the struggle: White Males getting higher wages than anyone else, the fact that White Males outnumber everyone else in the work force, especially in Managerial positions, the unveiled attempts of many companies to show their distaste for being forced by law to hire Women and Minorities with their practice of hiring only the bare minimum required and putting them in the less desirable positions.

We try to say we are the "More Enlightened" culture, but the reality is, Racism, Sexism, and other Prejudices are very much alive and well in this country. People like Fred Phelps are a slap-in-the-face example of that. But at least people are trying in this country, even if those attempts are thinly veiled at best.

To take a different view here, it was very dangerous and against their culture for her to be with a man that wasn't a relative or her husband. Perhaps the people who attacked her were punishing her in their own way. But I do not understand why they increased her sentence. I would think she'd only be punished for her own crime.