What the hell is wrong with these people?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071121/..._ea/saudi_rape

Well, at least they did that. I'm surprised they didn't receive a medal. Of course, they didn't say what the sentence for the men actually was.

This is what can happen when politics and religion get too mixed up.

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I wasn't born with enough middle fingers.

See my opinion below...nuff said.

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http://www.freedomswatch.org/Home/tabid/36/Default.aspx

When religion ruled the world...wasn't that the Dark Ages?

When atheism ruled the [eastern] world...wasn't that the Soviet Empire?

I didn't realize you could make laws based upon the precept "there is no God". Not much to work with there I would suspect. Seems to me the problem in the USSR was Communism, not atheism per se. Because atheism without Communism is pretty benign. So is religion without theocracy.

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I wasn't born with enough middle fingers.

I think it was a weak attempt to divert attention away from religion being the root cause of this sentence. A problem that lead to many such sentences in our own past until we wised up and kicked religion out of our sentencing.

Religion was the root cause of this sentence. I consider the Muslim religion evil and dangerous.

Communism was the attempt by men to elevate government to the level of deity with atheism as one of its foundational pillars.

The problem is the slow movement from traditional mode to the bureaucratic mode. At one time the "Christian" world was similar and progress wasn't as quick as we'd like to believe. But over time as bureaucracy became more the power in society than religion, punishments started getting more and more handed out on the basis of merit rather than superstition.
In traditional societies blasphemies are often treated more harshly than obvious crimes... because there is no intrinsic deterrent to a sensible person ("How dare you not avoid getting raped!") and because of the dual motives of control in a superstitious traditional society: to keep authoritarian control and to make sure God doesn't get mad and kill everyone.

Unfortunately the "Muslim world" faces the problem of being back a couple centuries in social progress and having a bureaucratic world in existence to rebel against.
But look at Pakistan (the general order of things, not the wackos in the mountains and the paranoid dictator). That is a Muslim state where bureaucracy has become the norm at least for most of the society. Shariah Law has been largely rejected.

I think the problem is not with the people as a race or even a religious group... but the fact that their societies are far from joining the 21st century... or even the 20th.

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"Man lives in the sunlit world of that which he believes to be reality. But unseen by most is an underworld, a place that is just as real... but not as brightly lit... A DARK SIDE!"
-opening from Tales From the Darkside

That was it. The rest means nothing. Nazism elevated nationalism to the level of diety and Atheism didn't play into it.

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I wasn't born with enough middle fingers.

A broad smear at religion. Do you think all religions, or even moslems generally, approve such acts? Now, be a man and retract your stupid remark.

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Blade: "more educated and literate people than Justabubba"

Justabubba: "that would include everyone"

http://politicalforum.com/showthread.php?t=27847

Then maybe our course of action should be to tell the Saud family that America had this problem with religious puritans (some would say within the last 50 years NOT "centuries") and we learned from our mistakes that sentencing should be based on the crime and the benefits to society rather than religion.

There is still a semblence of that when conservatives put forth the notion that women "ask for it."

Heck, other countries still use our destruction of treaties with the Native Americans as how we do business here. They certainly throw slavery and civil rights in our face (both backed and attacked by religion which shows our bipolar past).