You've got to hand it to the boy

[Gob]

LAHORE, Pakistan: Late one night, the imam Shabir Ahmad looked up from prayers at his mosque to see a 15-year-old boy approaching with a plate in his outstretched left hand. On it was the boy's freshly severed right hand.

Ahmad did not hesitate. He fled the mosque and left the village, in eastern Punjab province.

Earlier that night, January 10, he had denounced the boy as a blasphemer, an accusation that in Pakistan can get a person killed - even when the accusation is false, as it was in this case.

The boy, Anwar Ali, the devout son of a poor labourer, had been attending an evening prayer gathering at the mosque in the village of Khanqah when Ahmad asked for a show of hands of those who did not love the Prophet Muhammad. Thinking the cleric had asked for those who did love the prophet, Anwar's hand shot up, according to witnesses and the boy's family.

He realised his mistake when he saw that his was the only hand up, and he quickly put it down. But by then Ahmad was screaming "Blasphemer!" at him, along with many others in the crowd. "Don't you love your prophet?" they called, as the boy fled in disgrace.

Anwar went home, found a sharp scythe and chopped off his right hand that same night. When he showed it to the cleric, he made clear it was an offering to absolve his perceived sin.

The police quickly caught the mullah and locked him up, but local religious leaders protested, and the authorities backed down and released him. After the international news media began picking up on the story over the weekend, the authorities rearrested Ahmad on Sunday, holding him on terrorism and other charges.

"There is no physical evidence against the cleric of involvement, but he has been charged for inciting and arousing the emotions of people to such a level that the boy did this act," the district police chief, Faisal Rana, said.

The boy's family, however, argues that the cleric did nothing wrong and should not be punished.

"We are lucky that we have this son who loves Prophet Muhammad that much," Muhammad Ghafoor, Anwar's father, said in a telephone interview. "We will be rewarded by God for this in the eternal world."

Anwar, too, declined to make any charge against the mullah. "What I did was for love of the Prophet Muhammad," he said.

Blasphemy is a toxic subject in Pakistan, where a confusing body of laws has enshrined it as a potentially capital offence but also makes it nearly impossible for the accused to defend themselves in court. Even publicly repeating details of the accusation is tantamount to blasphemy in its own right.

Such cases almost never make it to court, however. The merest accusation that blasphemy has occurred has the power to arouse lynching or mob violence.

The governor of Punjab, Salman Taseer, was assassinated by his own bodyguard in 2011, after Taseer criticised the country's blasphemy laws and defended a Christian woman who had been falsely accused under them. The assassin is a national hero to many devout Pakistanis: His jail cell has become a pilgrimage site, and a mosque was renamed to honour him.

On Monday, Pakistan lifted a three-year-old ban on YouTube, which it had shut down because of accusations of airing anti-Islamic videos. The government announced that Google, which owns YouTube, had agreed to give it the right to block objectionable content. The Pakistani government blocks thousands of web pages it considers offensive.

"We have become a society so intoxicated by negative things in the name of religion that parents feel proud of sending their children to jihad and to die in the name of such activities," said I.A. Rehman, secretary-general of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan. "The government needs to do more to educate people and to speak out against extremism."

Anwar Ali did not even go to a hospital after his amputation, but had his right arm's stump bandaged at a village clinic and went home. Family members buried his hand in the village graveyard.


Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/world/pakistani-b ... z3xeOtzJ4B
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[MajGenl.Meade]

Yep, Islam - the religion of peace.

[Crackpot]

But what of shunning lynchings etc. done by "Christains"? I have seen similar hateful speech come from those on "our" side all my life. In fact it was the major reason I left the faith for 20 years.

That is not to say I don't find disturbing problems with Islam. But one should be careful when condemning a religion on the acts of man when yours suffers from the same disease.

[wesw]

[Scooter]

Where is the straw man, wes? The Christian scriptures say this:

And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away; it is better for you to lose one of your members than for your whole body to go into hell. (Mt 5:30, NRSV)

Most Christians would understand that as a metaphor, and anyone who took it literally and cut off his/her own hand would be branded as a nut. But a troubled Muslim boy does it, and clearly it is the fault of Islam, and not of his troubled mind. It's called hypocrisy, and self-righteous Christians are the undefeated world champions of that game.

[wesw]

ok, his right did not commit a sin did it? he misheard a speaker and raised it at the wrong time. where is the sin?

where was the sin?

the sin was that the pastor didn t laugh and correct the error, he accused him of blasphemy, which is punishable by death.

I don t see the relation to Christianity at all. perhaps the old testament but not really, it was a false accusation after all....

I say that your comparison is a bigger straw man than the previous straw man.

just my opinion tho. I ve been wrong before....

[Scooter]

So the distinction you are making is that Christians never falsely accuse other Christians of committing serious sins, that Islam is somehow unique in that regard? That the shunnings and lynchings and hateful language to which Crackpot refers were only ever done in response to actual sins, and never based on false accusations?

[wesw]

I m saying that Christians forgive.

I did not know that you were a literalist in your biblical interpretation.

I see metaphors allegories fables when I read what jesus said.

I see depths, I see him knowing and saying that all men would not hear and understand him the same way.

he who has ears, let him here..., right?

anyway, it is all about the forgiveness and the availability of redemption and the love of grace for me.

by the way, in my book you have earned a vote for person of the year, here.

i m not gonna change my vote tho, it would only confuse joe....

[MajGenl.Meade]

The point of course is that it is not endemic in Christ to kill people for (oh) doing art with a crucifix upside down in a jar of urine. There is no teaching in the Bible that people must be killed if they don't convert to either Judaism or to Christianity. It is not a tenet of the word of God.

What people do is what people do. Bad Christians do bad things. Stupid Christians do stupid things. Some "Christians" are not even Christian. These things may be true of Islamists too.

But what is true is that the Qu'ran teaches and promotes enforced conversion; earthly punishment and taxation for unbelievers; death for unbelievers; respect for unbelievers (how's that for contradiction, all you Bible critics who know f-all). Violence in the name of Allah (and of the Prophet) is endemic to the faith and its holy writ.

Violence in the name of Christ is against the faith and its holy writ.

Twist and turn it as you may, there is a vast difference between Islam and ALL other major world religions, none of which have holy texts that enjoin death upon their opposition

[wesw]

from Wikislam...

5 places in the world that still have amputation as a form of legal punishment. Every single one is officially Islamic.

"Amputating hands, flogging, all of these kind of [sentences] that are used in Iranian Islamic laws as punishment, all of these are considered torture, [and] torture has been banned in [international treaties]," Lahidji said. Amputation as legal punishment is still practiced in a number of countries, among them Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and Islamic regions of Nigeria. They were also common in Afghanistan under the Taliban. Parts of sub-Saharan West Africa have also recently witnessed amputations as a form of intimidation used by various political factions.[3]

[Scooter]

I m saying that Christians forgive.

They are taught so, not all do so.

I did not know that you were a literalist in your biblical interpretation.

I specifically said, most Christians see it as a metaphor, and that if someone were to take that passage literally he/she would be branded a nut. If you're not even going to be bothered to read what is posted before responding...

And I see the story recounted in this thread of one more example where the actions of individuals are interpreted as indictments of the religion because it is Islam, when the same people would always seek to distinguish between the actions of individuals and the tenets of the faith when it involves Christianity. That is the point that Crackpot was making, and he was entirely correct.

[wesw]

well, I can post page after page of evidence of muslim hand chopping. present tense hand chopping.

while you may find one or two Christians cutting hands in the wilds of Africa, maybe the lord s resistence army will be your example of Christians..., but I hope not. the muslims seem to relish it.

*******

That's one of the tidbits from the latest Pew survey, which does its best to massage the numbers to make Islam's devotees seem peaceful. Until numbers like these slip out.


In South Asia, support for applying religious law to family and property disputes is coupled with strong backing for severe criminal punishments, such as cutting off the hands of thieves (median of 81%) and the death penalty for Muslims who renounce their faith (76%).

Sharia is well and good until someone cuts their hand off. And apparently support for behanding people correlates with a strong desire to make Islam the law of the land.


Support for making sharia the law of the land is highest in South Asia (median of 84%). Medians of at least six-in-ten Muslims in sub-Saharan Africa (64%), the Middle East-North Africa region (74%) and Southeast Asia (77%) also favor enshrining sharia as official law.

And a risk factor for seeking to behand or behead people is Islamic religiosity.


The survey finds that religious devotion also shapes attitudes toward sharia. In many countries, Muslims with higher levels of religious commitment are more likely to support sharia. In Russia, for example, Muslims who say they pray several times a day are 37 percentage points more likely to support making sharia official law than Muslims who say they pray less frequently. Similarly, in Lebanon, the Palestinian territories and Tunisia, Muslims who say they pray several times a day are at least 25 percentage points more supportive of enshrining sharia as official law than are less observant Muslims.






.
The good news is that support for Sharia varies widely, except for most of the places where it doesn't.


The percentage of Muslims who say they want sharia to be “the official law of the land” varies widely around the world, from fewer than one-in-ten in Azerbaijan (8%) to near unanimity in Afghanistan (99%). But solid majorities in most of the countries surveyed across the Middle East and North Africa, sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and Southeast Asia favor the establishment of sharia, including 71% of Muslims in Nigeria, 72% in Indonesia, 74% in Egypt and 89% in the Palestinian territories.

Solid majorities that vary wildly. Now that's a sight to see. But at least Muslims seem to have a better grasp of the problem than Obama Inc.


And on balance, more Muslims are concerned about Islamic than Christian extremist groups. In all but one of the 36 countries where the question was asked, no more than one-in-five Muslims express worries about Christian extremism, compared with 28 countries where at least that many say they are concerned about Islamic extremist groups.

Maybe they're just Islamophobic?

[rubato]

I m saying that Christians forgive.

They are taught so, not all do so.
... "

Christians forgive today because they were stripped of the ability to kill, burn and maim by a moral secular government. Although they enjoyed those activities against blacks in the United States until quite recently.

German Christians (and many Polish, Ukranian, French &c) stopped forgiving Jews, Gypsies and political dissenters for a period of time in the first half of the century.

The difference between the Islamic world and the west is that we have benefited from a secular state which prevents religions from behaving they way they did continuously for 1,000 years before. The urge to violence is still there and we still have periodic episodes of someone being beaten to death during a 'spiritual healing' session.

yrs,
rubato

[Scooter]

well, I can post page after page of evidence of muslim hand chopping

When I address the hand chopping, you say "straw man" and say it's about the false accusation. When I address the false accusation, you deflect and start talking about hand chopping.

Christians forgive today because they were stripped of the ability to kill, burn and maim by a moral secular government...The difference between the Islamic world and the west is that we have benefited from a secular state which prevents religions from behaving they way they did continuously for 1,000 years before.

Exactly right.

[wesw]

scooter, the story is about a muslim boy chopping his hand off, so how is the long tradition of muslim hand chopping irrelevant?

Christian hand chopping was irrelevant and a straw man, because it isn t a thing.

[Crackpot]

When the hand chopping you mostly hear about gas to do with thievery? Yes.

[wesw]

the boy was smart to do it himself..., he probably saved his head from getting chopped.

blasphemy calls for death....

[Crackpot]

According to?

[wesw]

Garp.

[wesw]

link to Wikislam...https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q ... EiWys4I0Jw


from the Wikislam...

There are now 13 countries in the world where the state can execute you for being atheist. Every single one is officially Islamic.

In 13 countries around the world, all of them Muslim, people who openly espouse atheism or reject the official state religion of Islam face execution under the law, according to a detailed study issued on Tuesday.
. . .

The study, The Freethought Report 2013, was issued by the International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU), a global body uniting atheists, agnostics and other religious skeptics, to mark United Nations' Human Rights Day on Tuesday.
. . .
A first survey of 60 countries last year showed just seven where death, often by public beheading, is the punishment for either blasphemy or apostasy - renouncing belief or switching to another religion which is also protected under U.N. accords.
But this year's more comprehensive study showed six more, bringing the full list to Afghanistan, Iran, Malaysia, Maldives, Mauritania, Nigeria, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, United Arab Emirates and Yemen.[7]