What Kind of a Religion Is This?

From a student required to report on current event stories from either a daily newspaper or a weekly newsmagazine.

I've got a real serious problem with Islam.

I've heard that Islam is one of the world's top religions -- growing faster than any other.

But I've got a real serious problem with it.

Although this is beyond belief, I read in the Los Angeles Times that a 13-year old girl was stoned to death by dozens of men in Somalia in a stadium packed with more than 1,000 spectators.

This 13-year old girl had been raped by three men -- and according to Islamic law she had thereby committed adultery.

Can there be any more distorted sense of morality than this?

And then today in Time I read that more than 700 Sudanese women are in prison for offenses such as wearing pants considered "indecent." They are now stuck there because they can't pay the fine.

I know that some very, very bad things have happened in Christianity -- the Crusades and Inquisition being examples -- but, that was then and this is now.

What's a religion without any sense of morality, humanity, or decency?

Although what you've read is, indeed, horrendous, keep in mind that Islam can't be judged by the acts of a few fanatical believers, just as Christianity can't.

In Christianity, the Crusades and the Inquisition were responsible torturing and murdering thousands of innocent people -- men and women were burned alive "to save their souls."

Unpleasant as it might be, it's a part of the history of Christianity that can't be denied or brushed aside.

Fortunately, today we have the international media to bring atrocities to world attention.

Two recent cases had reverberations around the world: the young couple that was stoned to death in Northern Afghanistan in late August 2010 for trying to elope.

And some weeks before that there was the Iranian woman sentenced to death by stoning on adultery charges. After world-wide outrage, and in an apparent effort to legitimize their case against her (without backing down), Iranian authorities then bumped the charge against her up from adultery to murder.

Lest we feel Christianity is above such things, stoning to death is a punishment prescribed for 'questionable' (guilty until proven innocent) young women in the Old Testament.

Fortunately, today all but the most radical Christian bible literalists can explain their way around such biblical mandates.

But, your letter raises a good question for debate: Do religions need to follow a morality that overrides ancient scriptural mandates or should these mandates prevail -- regardless?

Or, to put it another way, should what's moral and not moral be allowed to change with the times?