The Taliban are not practicioners of peace--they are back woods people from moutain villages. Mainstream Muslims find them barbaric. As usual you put up things for shock value. Sure glad we don't have anyone this barbaic living in the US.
I think we as Americans need to reflect on what WE have done as Americans to cause these peaceful Muslims to mutilate their own women. Ever since Obama increased troop levels in Afghanistan, it seems as if we disrupted their peaceful culture, and now they are mutilating their women. We need to pull out of Afghanistan and let the Afghan people govern themselves, our presence there is causing these enlightened people to become barbaric.
99 lashes and a death sentence for female adulterers. Is Iranian Sharia Law considered "mainstream"?
Quoted Text
Iran: woman convicted of adultery will not be stoned to death, embassy responds to worldwide outrage
Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, a mother of two who is facing the punishment of stoning to death in Iran.
The world spoke out against the barbaric sentence for an Iranian woman sentenced to death by stoning for adultery, and it seems Iran has listened.
"She will not be executed by stoning punishment," the Iranian embassy said in a statement to London's Channel 4 news Thursday, commenting on reports that Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani would be stoned to death for "illicit relationships" conducted after the death of her husband.
The embassy claims that, despite international reports, the violent punishment was never actually on the table. "This mission denies the false news aired in this respect," the embassy said in the statement.
"The Embassy of the Islamic Republic of Iran highly recommends that news and reports should not be taken for granted and considered a reliable source of information for official statements or misjudgements."
It had read like a story straight out of the Middle Ages: Caught committing adultery, a woman was sentenced to a barbaric fate. But for Ashtiani, the brutal sentence seemed far from ancient history -- it was a terrifying reality.
Ashtiani was found to have had "illicit relationships" with two men after the death of her husband, and initially sentenced to 99 lashings.
But after she was flogged in front of her teenage son, the case was re-opened and the judge ultimately gave her the death penalty, sentencing her to a violent end.
Under Iran's Islamic laws, adultery is the only capital offense that can be punished by stoning, the AP reports. A man is usually buried up to his waist, and a woman up to her neck.
Those attending the execution then throw stones at the prisoner until he or she dies. If the convicted person is able to escape from the hole, the death sentence is commuted.
Ashtiani already has spent five years in prison, and her two children were heartbroken and horrified by her sentence. "Imagining her, bound inside a deep hole in the ground, stoned to death, has been a nightmare for me and my sister for all these years," her son Sajad, 22, told the Guardian.
Since news of Ashianti's sentence broke, human rights activists, politicians and celebrities have voiced outrage.
Stoning is a "medieval punishment which has no role in the modern world," British Foreign Secretary William Hague told the AP on Thursday. "If the punishment is carried out, it will disgust and appall the watching world."
Celebrities such as Colin Firth, Emma Thompson, and Robert Redford have added their names to a campaign pushing for Ashianti's release, according to The Times of London, which also quoted Sen. John Kerry (D.-Mass) voicing his disgust.
Even Lindsay Lohan weighed in on the case, taking to Twitter on Wednesday to post a link to the story and asking her fans to pass it on.
Stoning is a common sentence under Iran's Islamic laws, but rarely comes to pass -- the punishment is typically given in name only and later converted to a fine.
The last known stoning took place in 2008, the AP reports, although human rights activists believe there may have been more because the government rarely confirms that a stoning has been carried out.
Mina Ahadi, a prominent human rights activist in Germany, has been working to raise the profile on Ashtiani’s case, and says she knows of at least 12 other Iranian women awaiting the same fate.
"These are just the women I know,” she told the AP. “I estimate that at least 40 to 50 other women are waiting for the same destiny in Iran right now.”
Saudi Arabia's religious police launch Valentine's Day crackdown; target stores selling red items
BY OREN YANIV
A Saudi woman is seen at a flower shop on the eve of Valentine's Day in Riyadh last year.
The Islamic theocracy is cracking down on stores selling red roses, heart-shaped products or red gift wraps.
Valntine's Day merchandise is considered contraband because observing Western holidays is prohibited in Saudi Arabia.
"As Muslims, we shouldn't celebrate a non-Muslim celebration, especially this one that encourages immoral relations between unmarried men and women," Sheikh Khaled Al-Dossari, a scholar in Islamic studies, told the Saudi Gazette.
Religious cops from the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice patrol shops, confiscate symbols of love, and destroy them.
"Those who don't comply will be punished," they warned in ads placed in newspapers.
Many Saudis work to get around the party poopers. Since the crackdown only goes into full swing the week of Valentine's Day, they buy their red-themed gifts in advance or stealthily get flowers from the black market.
"I think what they are doing is ridiculous," said the writer of a local blog called Saudi Jeans. "What the conservatives in this country need to learn is something called 'tolerance.'"
That's unlikely.
All but the two most important Muslim holidays are banned in the birthplace of Islam, where women can't drive or mingle in public with unrelated men.
Valentine's day is named after a Christian saint martyred by the Romans in the 3rd Century.
Is Pakistan "mainstream" and enlightened? I guess throwing acid in a woman's face is better than stoned to death. So they would be considered "progressive" compared to Iran.
"While Foreign Terrorists were plotting to murder and maim using homemade bombs in Boston, Democrap officials in Washington DC, Albany and here were busy watching ME and other law abiding American Citizens who are gun owners and taxpayers, in an effort to blame the nation's lack of security on US so that they could have a political scapegoat."
I know Jews who won't ev en say the word "Christmas." You gonna jump on them too?
Yeah, that is a great comparison to the aggressiveness and violence stemming from the muzzies.
"While Foreign Terrorists were plotting to murder and maim using homemade bombs in Boston, Democrap officials in Washington DC, Albany and here were busy watching ME and other law abiding American Citizens who are gun owners and taxpayers, in an effort to blame the nation's lack of security on US so that they could have a political scapegoat."
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