A woman will be stoned to death when she has weaned her baby

[bushpig]

If you would like to add your name to the protest about this ruling in Nigeria under local, not federal law, just do a search on Yahoo! for the name Amina Lawal. You will get the Amnesty International website and be able to email the President of Nigeria, and the Nigerian Ambassador.

She is held to be guilty for having a child while unmarried. The father is being let off for lack of evidence.

Please do this . Women are suffering in Nigeria under this punitive law which is not upheld by anything in the Koran

Liamsmum, there are lots of people who commit crime. I have no time for crime or criminals but I do not think that people who are foreign are "worse" than people who aren't.

There is a man currently being hunted in a Butlin's Holiday camp for alleged rapes. That is horrifying. But the police told the press he is Romanian. I fail to see what that has to do with it.

Don't forget, during the Crusades, Christians did the very thing a small minority of Muslims are doing now. Also there are elements of Christianity which encourage people to "spread the word".

Personally I have no time for any religion!

Well I guess that as they have put out a plea for help in finding the man concerned, they thought it might be helpful to include his nationality along with the physical description so that perhaps someone has a chance of identifying him.

That would be the pre-text Croppy perhaps. There was still a nasty element on the Freeserve headlines screaming "Asylum seeker hunted in rape case" or something.

Jbr, I agree with your comments on asylum seekers, but I really don't understand the difference between not having any time for immigrants and not having any time for religion. Surely it's better to be open-minded on both? As a Christian I am appalled and ashamed by what some people have done in Christ's name but such things have nothing to do with His teachings and everything to do with evil. Plenty of wars have been fought over territory, succession, money...we will always find an excuse and religion has just been one among many.

Liamsmum, what you describe is terrible. But do you really think that these young men wouldn't commit rape if they were not Muslims? As for Australia and the U.S. being Christain countries, I don't believe they were as far as the indigenous people were concerned, many of whom weren't exactly treated in a Christian manner.

Ionesmum, of course men who are not muslims commit rape - that is not what I was saying. This crime is particularly vicious, don't you think, because these young women have been raped just for being Australian, by a group who view women as inferior?? That is the danger as far as I am concerned.

Once again, I said before that our country was "founded" as a Christian nation, in other words, that is how it was established as a country over 200 years ago. Obviously this does not include the aboriginals who were here prior to the arrival of the British. They were living in this land long before anyone had even discovered Australia. What I'm saying is that it was founded as a Christian nation when it became a British colony. It wasn't founded by Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists or any other such religions. That's what I meant. Obviously I know that in the past Christians have not given themselves a good name either, but as Aloha & others have said, aspects of Islam are 'cruel and medieval' and I personally believe it to be a dangerous religion. What anyone else thinks is up to them.

I don't like organised religion in general. I have yet to find a religion that wasn't homophobic.

I'm agnostic for starters.

But Liamsmum you are saying that is it is OK for the Christians to go and impose themselves on the Aboriginals but it is not OK for the Muslims to go and impose themselves on the Christians. Surely that is the same thing.

I do think that religion should be kept separate from the state. The problem in modern times is that this is the case in most nominally Christian countries but there are lots of Muslim states around. Religion and state together seems to concentrate too much power in one place.

I couldn't agree more that religion and state should be completely separated. I have no problems with individuals choosing to go to Church, temple, Mosque etc but I do strongly oppose state funding for Church schools of any denomination. I think it is totally outrageous that I could be funding my local primary through my taxes yet my ds would not be allowed in because of my strongly held beliefs. If they are allowed to turn down my ds, I should be allowed to refuse to pay taxes towards funding the school - and they can get try to get their own funding from religious sources and go private. I am absolutely furious with Tony Blair for suggesting increasing church shools. It means non-believers will have a much smaller choice of schools for their children than believers, while paying the same in tax, and that simply isn't fair.

On the other point, I think Shariah law is ALWAYS wrong and cruel so it seems to me that modern Muslims believe in a totally medieval religion, wheras I don't think most modern Christians do (though I am clearly not a believer myself). That is the difference. Also, IMO it's no good comparing Christianity of thousands of years ago to the Muslims of today - we can't change or affect the past - it's over - but what's going on today is far more important. That poor Nigerian woman is at risk of her life today, because of Muslim laws.
BTW, under Shariah Law, any woman coming forward to report rape is liable to be killed for 'committing adultery'. I bet that keeps the crime statistics down nicely.

I also disagree with the idea of church schools, although my beliefs would mean that DS could get in. Maybe thats why I don't feel as strongly as you seem to Aloha!!

I also take your point about comparing modernday Islam with historical Christianity. However I don't like the "we were here first" argument when actually its more like "we were here second or third".

Sorry Liamsmum, I didn't express myself very well. What I meant was that you seemed to be saying that the fact that these men are Muslims is the reason that they rape.

Aloha and Bozza, I so agree that State and religion shoould be separate. Rightly or wrongly I am deeply mistrustful of the State and I believe that to link the church to it compromises the latter's integrity. For example, I bet Blair will expect support from Rowan Williams for any attack on Iarq, although I think he won't get it. I also agree about faith schools being state-funded - the less the state intereferes with dd's education the happier I'll be, not because of my religious beliefs (her primary school islikely to be non-religious) but because they just seem to make such a pig's ear of everything. I also think that in the long run these new religious schools will have to fund themselves. Blair has already done this with charities, 'generously' giving existing buildings with going concerns (e.g. day centres) and then leaving the charities to foot the bill for running the things.

Jbr, I do sort of sympathise with your view in a way, although as a church-goer i participate in organised religion there is much of it that is rules, regulations and attitudes that have gone far away from the faith that they represent. Here we have a 13th century church and some people seem to worship the building - one person said recently that she thought that the pews are the heart of the church! (Silly me, I thought it was God.) I don't like being described as religious, it has connotations of things that have nothing to do with faith or belief.

ionesmum - I think you have hit the nail on the head. The linking of religion and state compromises both.

Message withdrawn

Interesting light on this debate:

The same Nigerian 'court' has now sentenced a man to be stoned to death for raping a 9-year-old girl.

Bloss, football violence has nothing to do with anything! Those fights at football matches are organised by gangs who "hi-jack" the football matches as an excuse for violence and for some reason the people who do that are normally white working class men.

Good grief, Philli.

To put the boot on the other foot, as it were, (going back over this thread a bit) it seems as though many are quick to point an accusing finger at Christianity, Islam, religion in general for many of the troubles of this world, but what about the millions who have been persecuted by Communist/Fascist governments in the past for simply having a faith (whatever it may be)?
I'm not really making much of a point here other than Man himself is inherently bad, whether his god is spiritual or material.

Well said Jodee.

"Man himself is inherently bad, whether his god is spiritual or material."

???????????

Interestingly, there is a big backlash in Holland against immigrants, because they are incredibly proud of their tolerant, diverse, sexually and politically open-minded country and don't want to import a lot of religious maniacs and bigots with a medieval mindset who no sooner arrive, than want to impose their much less tolerant worldview on the natives. So there is a leftie/liberal reason for opposing some kinds of immigration! Not particularly my view, but I do sympathise.

I came to this conclusion a while ago. That, basically, none of us can help what we are born into and once we have been brought up in that culture/religion/class, we are adamant that our beliefs and society and way of living are the best.

I know this simplifies things a lot and don't mean to patronise anyone but it is true that deep down we fight our little corner of 'perfection' tooth and nail and oppopse anything that may threaten its survival.

Another point I wish to make is that many people living in Islamic countries are deprived of many rights, including information and freedom to be educated. This does not make it very conducive to evolving with modern times. Modern times simply do not exist in these people's lives, when you have to live in conditions similar to biblical ages (see footage from Afghanistan), then you will believe in the same laws as that era, stonings etc..

All this opens a new can of worms on development, colonisation and equality which other better informed people than myself are no doubt thrashing out in South Africa.

This bit just came to mind.

Talking of rapists and immigrants. It has been shown that the majority of sex offenders (of any religion/colour/creed) are avid consumers of pornography.

And where does the most imaginative pornography originate? That beacon of christian democracy and free land, Holland.

Apparently the police are no longer seeking 'a Romanian asylum-seeker' for the rapes at the holiday camp, they have arrested someone else.

I read an interesting article today likening the court that wants to stone the woman to death and the mob that were outside the court waiting for Maxine Carr, who so far has not been found guilty of anything. What would have happened had the crowd been able to get hold of her? The article also made teh point that Shaira law would be very popular with much of our society. Are we so very different?

Good point Ionesmum. I do disagree when people try to pin violence on religion. As I said earlier in this thread, these people would be violent even if there was no religion. Religion is not to blame for the bigotry of human beings, from trying to get one over on your neighbour to attacking a person of a different race, there will always be jealously and bigotry. Religion promotes peace, love, humility. But as with any written text, it's words can always be taken out of context, twisted and re-worded for our own convienence. Is not one of the Commandments 'love thy neighbour as thyself'? Which Jesus himself said was one of the most important commandments of all. If we just kept this one, there would be none of this violence.