What Kind of a Religion Is This?

From 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 -- many of them women who 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.

Even today, some radical Christian fundamentalists call for murder and "burning in hell" for those who don't believe as they do.

But, you raise a good question for debate: Do religions need to contain a common sense of morality or humanity?