A 14-year-old Bangladeshi girl allegedly raped by a much older cousin has died
after being publicly flogged for adultery, media reports said.

Hena Begum was sentenced to receive 100 lashes by a village council made up of elders
and Muslim clerics in the district of Shariatpur, about 35 miles from the capital, Dhaka.

She endured about 80 lashes before collapsing Monday, according to a Bangladeshi newspaper.
Her family took her to a hospital, where she died.

"What sort of justice is this? My daughter has been beaten to death in the name of justice.
If it had been a proper court then my daughter would not have died," said the girl's father.

Family members said Hena was raped by a 40-year-old married cousin.
The man's family beat up the teen, then accused of her adultery, the newspaper said.

The very next day, she was sentenced to the flogging in a fatwa, or religious ruling,
issued by the village council under Islamic Shariah law, the BBC said.

When Religion does that, it's called Extremism, for a good reason.

I think people should be careful not to confuse Religion and Extremism. It's not just for Religion's sake, but also so the Religious can learn to tell the difference and spend less time making us and themselves suffer.

It's not extremism, when it's customary in most of the Muslim world to do so.

You don't know much about the muslim world, do you?

I do.

It is not extremism in the muslim world to do these things.

I have been in Egypt, and other mostly islamic locales this is not even noteworthy there. Even Iran, since the shah left has fallen back to this. In the eighties I arrived at midnite to Tehran and the cabbie laughed at my nervousness saying "you are from the states, there is no danger in our country late at night".

He was wrong, there was and is, but the danger is not from criminals, it's from muslims. If someone had accused me of stealing a pencil I would have come home minus a hand or at least a finger.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/08/2011 02:06PM by roflmao.

joesmyth Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> When Religion does that, it's called Extremism,
> for a good reason.
>
> I think people should be careful not to confuse
> Religion and Extremism.

Well, duh... No religion, no extremism!

it's called religion.

Please people, do not listen to evil people who say this sort of stuff is not because of religion.

it is.

When I was a child I thought as a child. But now I'm an adult, this is what religion does.

It kills.

+1

general and not on any specific one. They all suck the same.

if they all suck the same, why aren't mormon girls being thrashed to death with whips when they get raped?

this thread has no sense of proportion and contradicts itself. i don't mind atheism, but i hate it when it becomes another mindless self-promoting "truth." overzealous atheists (trying to prove something that ought to be easy to prove,) can be just as annoying (and preachy, and crazy) as theists. have some balance.

technical accuracy is not a substitution for thought.

i'd rather think and be incidentally wrong than not think and be incidentally right.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/08/2011 04:23AM by joesmyth.

joesmyth Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> if they all suck the same, why aren't mormon girls
> being thrashed to death with whips when they get
> raped?


Mormons do mind rape and leaves no apparent evidence. And they don't stop at raping females, males too. Strictly speaking it is not as severe as Islamic teaching, but a very close mental and emotional parallel.

"if they all suck the same, why aren't mormon girls being thrashed to death with whips when they get raped?"

If BY's theocracy had been allowed to flourish unchecked, it would (and was) absolutely be as extreme.

But b/c it was forced to conform to US law, we instead get things like,"The Miracle of Forgiveness" which is TSCC's way of inflicting the emotional equivalent of what that poor girl went thru.

Religion, as a whole, had done far more damage to humanity that it has done good.

No the mormon women see that violence and shake thair heads at it glad thair relegion dosent do that but, thair relegion does end up guilding people so much metaphoricly speaking they beat themselves.

Unfortunately it *is* the religion that causes this. Yes, an extreme version of it but it wouldn't have happened without the religion as the reason behind it. These things mostly happen in Villages where Islam is passed down, Quran is memorized and there is poverty and not very much choice for education. Not that it never happens in more progressive places, just that it is normally in those types of situations.
Adultery is supposed to be punishable with witnesses (not that it is ok or anything) but a conviction normally requires a minimum of four witnesses who directly observed the sexual activity. You can confess to it to but if they acted according to the Quran and sound hadith you don't punish a rape victim with lashes and certainly without witnesses of the adultery taking place. Also anyone who accuses a "chaste" woman of adultery and then do not produce four witnesses is guilty of slandering, which is a really really bad offense in Islam.

I do remember a few cases of young girls in my ex's area (where most of his family resides in pakistan) that were raped and they were basically forced to marry the man that raped them after the men paid off the girls family. I couldn't keep my mouth shut about the sickness of this practice so my ex tended to keep me away from the male members of his family. They didn't like me very much.

How anyone can say it is not Religion that is the root cause of this type of behavior is beyond me.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 02/08/2011 04:30AM by rosyjenn.

rosyjenn Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

> I do remember a few cases of young girls in my
> ex's area (where most of his family resides in
> pakistan) that were raped and they were basically
> forced to marry the man that raped them after the
> men paid off the girls family.

Actually, that law is in the Bible (Deuteronomy 22)

yeah i know, i was there for years. and some people are worse off than i was.

it's not "all the same" though. i know a guy reading about taoism and the most it will probably ever "do" to him is make him more interesting when we sit down for coffee. but maybe he'll start beating people to death with "uncarved blocks."

please, don't talk about religion the way PSA's talk about marijuana.

religion isn't going to suck out everyone's brain and give them AIDS. religion varies from HARMLESS to lethal. it's just ideas. it takes sick (or brainwashed) people to use those ideas to do harm. then it's perfectly reasonable to call it a cult (like with mormons) or extremism (like with muslim extremists.) beyond that it's just another crusade against someone else's beliefs. not good, in my experience.

(I can't remember the author of that quote.)

I like the quote

"With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil-that takes religion." Steven Weinberg

Awesome! Quote!

Gullibles Travels Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> (I can't remember the author of that quote.)


"Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities." ~ Voltaire

"Infidels are Cool" website:

http://www.hudson-ny.org/1856/bangladesh-sharia-brutality-raped-girl

you know, that really doesn't sound like a voltaire quote. i can't find a source for it online, just a lot of people quoting it and attributing it to voltaire. at least they all think it was him.

one of the reasons that i think it's more recent is the sing-songy similiarity of the two words at the end of each part of the quote. they practically rhyme like a song. of course voltaire (not even his real name) tended towards french, not english, but he's known for wit, not song. i'd love to see a real source, but if i can't find one i'm certainly not going to insist you do.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/08/2011 12:37PM by joesmyth.

Gullibles Travels Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> (I can't remember the author of that quote.)

Voltaire

the 40-year-old rapist cousin gets off scot-free to rape and rape again.

Ya gotta love that old-time religion, boy-howdy.

Extremism and pure hatred. That girl was a victim. At her age did she even understand what would be done to her if such an event happened? And at her age could she have stopped the rape??? Of course not. The people who call that evil behavior "religion" do not understand love at all. I am sickened by this.

Okay, I agree that this totally sucks. However, I read more than 14 press releases from all different sources and all referred to this as an "affair" with none indicating she was raped. Where did you find that?

Ron

... that aren't built on lies and deception aimed at picking people's pockets?

Thanks in advance!

Love,

Timmy

i'm pretty sure neither taoism or buddhism aimed and picking pockets. i honestly doubt it was the point of christianity, either. but now? certainly. buddhism fleeces with the best of them and though i've never heard of it, taoism is surely used to milk people dry in various parts of china, not sure about the u.s.

then again, so are accredited colleges. you can make anything into a scam. that doesn't legitimize religion per se, but i'm a pretty cynical person, and i still can't reduce all religion to grabbing people's money. too much of it's free until they pass the plate.

i give to a church that i'm not a member of, because they supply really good coffee (and refreshments) regardless of payment, and i like to keep it going. they're a uu, so they're hardly selling any particular religion, people even call them a "quasi-religion." (but that's because i'm a communist, which we all know makes you godless by default)

... none.

That sucks in a sliding scale sort of way.

Timothy

so if i pick up a book and start reading about taoism i'm ultimately going to go give people money like a sucker?

the thing is, i've spent a lot of time studying religion free of charge, but i've only given money to judeo-christianity.

I've spent a fair amount of time studying religion myself.

Never gave any of 'em a dime, including mormonism.

Tell me, did you pay for the book on taoism?

Timothy

sure i paid for the book on taoism. but it was fascinating.

i paid for a copy of "star trek iv: the voyage home," too. both were deeply entertaining, if not enlightening. no one i know promised me anything if i read the book, i was just curious.

the tao te ching is in the public domain. i paid for printing and translation into english, it was a new translation.

yes, reeks of bible editions. but at least the tao te ching says "the tao can't be taken literally." too bad they didn't put that in the kjv, but if they had, people would be twisting it around their own way. a fine thing, unless they're bent on authority and making people miserable, in which case it's the same thing.

viewing religion as fiction is fine, it's beneficial. writing it into state law is very very bad, and that isn't always how they did christianity, nor judaism. presumably the tao was once unsullied, too, the work of one or several philosophers. i would like to know why abraham decided to go on his anti-pagan crusade, but he was a bit before my time. and the pagans? no idea what started their thing. somehow i don't think it was money.

Much like buddhism which also says it can't be taken literally.

Back to zero.

Timothy

i'll be happy to talk to you about this in the other thread where we're talking about the exact same thing, timothy, i'm growing pretty tired of this thread.

as part of an argument in favor of logic over religion, it's been implied i can't handle guns safely because i'm crazy or something. with ad hom and other stupid insulting fallacies like that, i don't need to defend logic, it's already dead.

You wrote:

"I'll be happy to talk to you about this in the other thread where we're talking about the exact same thing, timothy, i'm growing pretty tired of this thread."

I'm sure you are growing tired, but as I often observe, "Who gives a s**t?"

Timothy

decent people give a shit.

i presumed you were counting yourself as one, otherwise why blame religion for the same nastiness you take pride in for different reasons?

Church going types, I assume?

Timothy

no, people who don't emulate church going types in their arguments against religion.

i am not referring to you. i am still deciding whether you're having an honest debate with me, or whether you're just trying to make me sorry my opinion differs from yours like the other guy. i'm still leaning towards "honest debate," so don't take it personally, yet.

... and you can pretty much end all speculation.

Timothy

I hope you don't have access to guns.

well, that's an idiotic statment. you must believe that anyone who even looks at religion is going to start some kind of killing spree eventually.

but you'll be relieved to know i don't have any, nor want any. but thanks for the vote of confidence in my ability to not go around killing for silly reaons, i appreciate it. the kind of mindless paranoia you're expressing is a perfect example of why your type shouldn't claim a monopoly on "reason," and demonstrates exactly the kind of fear and predjudice that makes religion so dangerous. you're as quick to judge me as a bishop, without reason. just based on thinking differently than you. good luck with that, i've nothing more to say to your ridiculous petty insults.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/08/2011 01:23PM by joesmyth.

yeah? fuck your mother.

"F**k your mother" would not be one.

Timothy

I lived in the Middle East for three years working for Shell. This kind of thing is not all that uncommon and is not confined to the rural areas or poor people. If you want an eye opener, read "Princess." It talks about such things as the girl who was drowned in the family swimming pool to protect the family honor. She had been raped by her brother's friends. The family had a party and invited all of the relatives to watch the drowning.

http://www.amazon.com/Princess-Story-Behind-Saudi-Arabia/dp/0967673747



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/08/2011 01:26PM by Jim Huston.

Ahh Islam, the religion of choice for brutish, testosterone fueled fuckwits.

Please don't try to explain to me the difference between extremism and religion. At best, religion is halfway there. At worst - Islam...

Maybe you mean the difference between fundamentalists and moderates. In that case, the moderates provide safe haven for the fundamentalists to disappear when conditions are unfavorable to their abuses.

Religion is as evil as the social environment allows it to be. When it runs unchecked, it's as bad as this example every time. Look at the middle ages, the old testament, early Utah, the middle east, etc. Religion is always a negative influence that takes the credit for the morality imposed by a secular world, but when that secular world doesn't exist you see how religion really is.