Religion... it's a source of solace and comfort in a world torn asunder by... religion.
There's lots of hideous stuff about Islam. But it's really not like Christianity is that much better. Christian extremists would murder doctors
for performing abortions. Christians regularly endorse the death penalty. Remember Bush mocking some poor woman who was about to be executed as he
denied her clemency?
I bet most of the people on here who are
so incensed with this are Christians, who think they're just
so much better.
Well, if you were to tot up the number of people killed in the name of JC and those killed for Allah, I bet, even if you discounted the head start
Christianity got (Mohammed was almost six centuries later), that more people have been killed in the name of God.
So don't get all "holier than thou" about this. You can't afford to. Particularly if you're American. Two pointless invasions in the first
decade of this century alone? (OK, there were reasons, but not the ones given in public, at least. There's no moral high ground here.)
I am sickened by the hypocrisy of threads like these.
It's also rather amusing that Washington's little Afghani-American puppet, Hamid Karzai, is passing laws that are making the kind of behaviour cited
in the OP very do-able...
Worse than the Taliban
The final document has not been published, but the law is believed to contain articles that rule women cannot leave the house without their
husbands' permission, that they can only seek work, education or visit the doctor with their husbands' permission, and that they cannot refuse their
husband sex.
That's legalising rape within marriage, in case you hadn't noticed.
Equally well, before the US invasion, Iraq was secularised and women could dress in Western fashions and generally enjoyed freedom to travel and work.
Not any more.
From the moment in early summer 2003 when Sunni and Shia leaders encouraged their followers to unite to kick out the occupiers, the US and UK began a
policy of divide and rule: there was a clandestine bombing campaign around mosques to sow dissent, and after Negroponte showed up, the death squads
started, as one would expect given his previous form.
And of course this encourages the rise of fundamentalism. There's a heartbreaking entry in the Riverbend blog (which I can't find, there's too
much of it and it's all worth reading) where the author tries to get back her job as a software engineer. She can't travel to work alone any more.
When she gets there, strange and intimidating men seem to be calling the shots. Her old boss looks frightened and she can't get her old job back.
None of the women who worked there can do so any more.
The kind of hypocrisy, racism and islamophobia inherent in the OP sickens me, frankly.
So to those Americans up in arms about the appalling case cited in the OP:
your country created this situation. 
