Marches Against Sharia Law...

[rogue06]

People are dying as a result of extremist culture by way of sharia law. The implementation of sharia law does not necessitate a death penalty.

Yeah, in the "enlightened" Islamic countries they merely throw you in jail.

The fact is that the Qur'an says that gays are "a people transgressing beyond bounds" and "a people transgressing all limits." As a result the hadiths call for gays to be executed. The Sunan Abu Dāwūd (the third of the six "canonical" hadith collections recognized by Sunni Muslims) requires that gays be executed by being stoned to death: "Narrated by Abdullah ibn Abbas: The Prophet said: If you find anyone doing as Lot's people did, kill the one who does it, and the one to whom it is done."

Another one of the six major hadiths, Sunan at-Tirmidhi, has the same thing saying that Muhammad instructed that ""Whoever is found conducting himself in the manner of the people of Lot, kill the doer and the receiver."

The Umdat as-Salik wa 'Uddat an-Nasik ("Reliance of the Traveler and Tools of the Worshiper"), one of the most highly respected works on Islamic theology and jurisprudence^[1] and based on the teachings of Abu Zakaria Muhiy ad-Din Yahya Ibn Sharaf al-Nawawi (or just Al-Nawawi -- 1233–1277)^[2], concurs and also has Muhammad declaring "Kill the one who sodomizes and the one who lets it be done to him."

The mainstream Islamic source, OnIslam.net, proclaimed that homosexuality is "abnormal" and abhorrent" and confirmed that gays should be executed saying "The punishment for men or women who are unwilling to give up homosexuality and therefore are rejecting the guidance of Allah Most High is in fact death according to Islam."

As Islam Question and Answer, a popular Islamic website run by Muhammad Saalih Al-Munajjid who is considered a respected scholar, the only point of theological debate is not whether the homosexual should be killed, but how it should be done. And the 8 volume Fatawa Islamiyah (Islamic Verdicts), a collection of Islamic rulings issued by the renowned Islamic legal scholars advocates burning and stoning of gays.









1. Endorsed by both the president of the International Institute of Islamic Thought and the president of the Fiqh Council of North America, as well as Al Azhar Research Academy in Cairo, Egypt, regarded as being the Sunni Islamic world’s foremost educational institution.

2. He is still so widely esteemed and revered that Jabhat al-Nusra (a.k.a. al-Qaeda in Syria) demolished his tomb two years ago because they viewed it as sacrilegious.

[KingsGambit]

Yeah, in the "enlightened" Islamic countries they merely throw you in jail.

The fact is that the Qur'an says that gays are "a people transgressing beyond bounds" and "a people transgressing all limits." As a result the hadiths call for gays to be executed. T\\

Out of curiosity, as Christians, should we really be criticizing this given that the Bible quotes God as calling for them to be stoned?

[rogue06]

Seer it's nice to see you celebrating how accepting US Christians are of homosexuality. And Rogue's all teary eyed over the poor gay people who suffer under Sharia law.

How things change!

I have several friends who are gay as well as a cousin who I've always respected. While I think that it is a sin I do not think that anyone ought to be criminally punished -- especially by death -- for it.

[rogue06]

Out of curiosity, as Christians, should we really be criticizing this given that the Bible quotes God as calling for them to be stoned?

If gays were being executed in countries based upon Old Testament injunctions then this would be a valid comparison.

[KingsGambit]

If gays were being executed in countries based upon Old Testament injunctions then this would be a valid comparison.

No, my point is that the fact that God sanctioned it at one point suggests that we have no leg to stand on to call it inherently immoral.

I'm not being flip here. This is something that's actually been bothering me.

[Psychic Missile]

This despite the Orlando night club massacre?
Okay... I give up.

You should give up if you think a tiny percent of people are representative of a group.

[rogue06]

No, my point is that the fact that God sanctioned it at one point suggests that we have no leg to stand on to call it inherently immoral.

I'm not being flip here. This is something that's actually been bothering me.

My whole point here has been to show that executing gays (among other things) isn't something done only by a fringe element in Islam but is endorsed by mainstream readings of sharia law and hence it isn't "Islamophobic" to oppose the spread of sharia law.

[Psychic Missile]

Yeah, in the "enlightened" Islamic countries they merely throw you in jail.

The fact is that the Qur'an says that gays are "a people transgressing beyond bounds" and "a people transgressing all limits." As a result the hadiths call for gays to be executed. The Sunan Abu Dāwūd (the third of the six "canonical" hadith collections recognized by Sunni Muslims) requires that gays be executed by being stoned to death: "Narrated by Abdullah ibn Abbas: The Prophet said: If you find anyone doing as Lot's people did, kill the one who does it, and the one to whom it is done."

Another one of the six major hadiths, Sunan at-Tirmidhi, has the same thing saying that Muhammad instructed that ""Whoever is found conducting himself in the manner of the people of Lot, kill the doer and the receiver."

The Umdat as-Salik wa 'Uddat an-Nasik ("Reliance of the Traveler and Tools of the Worshiper"), one of the most highly respected works on Islamic theology and jurisprudence^[1] and based on the teachings of Abu Zakaria Muhiy ad-Din Yahya Ibn Sharaf al-Nawawi (or just Al-Nawawi -- 1233–1277)^[2], concurs and also has Muhammad declaring "Kill the one who sodomizes and the one who lets it be done to him."

The mainstream Islamic source, OnIslam.net, proclaimed that homosexuality is "abnormal" and abhorrent" and confirmed that gays should be executed saying "The punishment for men or women who are unwilling to give up homosexuality and therefore are rejecting the guidance of Allah Most High is in fact death according to Islam."

As Islam Question and Answer, a popular Islamic website run by Muhammad Saalih Al-Munajjid who is considered a respected scholar, the only point of theological debate is not whether the homosexual should be killed, but how it should be done. And the 8 volume Fatawa Islamiyah (Islamic Verdicts), a collection of Islamic rulings issued by the renowned Islamic legal scholars advocates burning and stoning of gays.

1. Endorsed by both the president of the International Institute of Islamic Thought and the president of the Fiqh Council of North America, as well as Al Azhar Research Academy in Cairo, Egypt, regarded as being the Sunni Islamic world’s foremost educational institution.

2. He is still so widely esteemed and revered that Jabhat al-Nusra (a.k.a. al-Qaeda in Syria) demolished his tomb two years ago because they viewed it as sacrilegious.

As you've illustrated, any Muslim who wants justification for killing gay people can find it. So can any Christian, Buddhist, or Hindu. The contents of a religion's holy texts are not a predictor of believers' behavior. Any adherent and culture is free to interpret, disavow, or adopt as they please.

[rogue06]

As you've illustrated, any Muslim who wants justification for killing gay people can find it. So can any Christian, Buddhist, or Hindu. The contents of a religion's holy texts are not a predictor of believers' behavior. Any adherent and culture is free to interpret, disavow, or adopt as they please.

You missed the point. This is mainstream interpretation of Islamic texts. This is sharia law. This is why it's spreading should be opposed.

[tabibito]

Out of curiosity, as Christians, should we really be criticizing this given that the Bible quotes God as calling for them to be stoned?

Old Testament law mandated stoning. New Testament law requires that they be put out of the church pending their repentance. So - no. Christianity can't call for a death penalty, or any real penalty beyond excommunication.

Seems fair enough to me: you get a member in your tennis club demanding a baseball diamond with the pitcher's mound in centre court, and then goes around telling people it's a baseball club ... I don't think many people would object to that member's eviction.

As Christians, perhaps we can't oppose the statement that such behaviour is unacceptable to God - but we surely can (and should) enacting penalties for people who don't claim to be Christians. And for those who do claim to be Christian ... the penalty is not beyond the bounds of reason.

[Starlight]

If gays were being executed in countries based upon Old Testament injunctions then this would be a valid comparison.

The US at its founding had the death penalty for gay sex. That was a result of the Christian / biblical influence on the culture of the people of the time, and indirectly/ultimately a result of the OT injunctions.

So I think critiquing Muslim countries for having the death penalty for gay sex due to their religion is a bit hypocritical for a bunch of Christians to be doing, given Christians in Christian-influenced countries, including the US, have done the same.

And US evangelical groups working in Africa have stirred up such anti-gay sentiment in Christian parts of Africa, such as Uganda, that those countries keep trying to pass the death penalty for gay sex.

[Charles]

The US at its founding had the death penalty for gay sex. That was a result of the Christian / biblical influence on the culture of the people of the time, and indirectly/ultimately a result of the OT injunctions.

So I think critiquing Muslim countries for having the death penalty for gay sex due to their religion is a bit hypocritical for a bunch of Christians to be doing, given Christians in Christian-influenced countries, including the US, have done the same.

And US evangelical groups working in Africa have stirred up such anti-gay sentiment in Christian parts of Africa, such as Uganda, that those countries keep trying to pass the death penalty for gay sex.

Very important points. We repeatedly hear that the Bible is clear on these issues, and that no one can come to the conclusion that killing homosexuals is justified by reading the Bible. However, this type of “clearnes” of the Bible on this particular point seems to have emerged at a rather late point in history, since the lines of those being killed or otherwise suffering based on the Bible’s harsh and unworthy description of homosexuals are long.

[tabibito]

So I think critiquing Muslim countries for having the death penalty for gay sex due to their religion is a bit hypocritical for a bunch of Christians to be doing, given Christians in Christian-influenced countries, including the US, have done the same.

I never subscribed to such a law - so it certainly doesn't even come close to being hypocritical at the personal level.

The churches generally (bar a scant few that aren't in fellowship with the mainstream) don't subscribe to such a law. That they did (or may have done) in the past is hardly relevant to current attitudes and actions: if any person who FORMERLY engaged in conduct that he now considers unacceptable - it is hardly a matter of hypocrisy for that person to say that the practice is unacceptable and oppose it. With regard to mainstream church members (and most fringe-church members) who ever subscribed to imposing death for homosexual offences ... do you know any: I don't - I suspect that they would themselves be long since dead.

Hypocrisy is after all, a matter of being two-faced (literally: acting a part) - saying one thing, but doing the opposite, imposing rules on others that the hypocrite himself does not abide by.

And yes - the rule IS that simple for a Christian. People did and do ignore (or may and may have ignored) the warrant of the New Testament in favour of the obsolescent Old Testament law. In such cases, the flaw is not in the teaching but in the following. Under the New Covenant, homosexual activity is a heinous act: it is right up there with theft, false witness, hypocrisy, and idle gossip - certainly not a matter for sentence of death by a church member's hand.

[Starlight]

I never subscribed to such a law - so it certainly doesn't even come close to being hypocritical at the personal level.

The hypocrisy comes in bashing Islam / the Koran for being anti-gay, when Christianity / the Bible has been plenty anti-gay.

Yes, on the whole the average Christian today is much better than the average Muslim on this issue, true. On the whole I think the average Christian today is much better than the average Muslim on most issues. But I think that has more to do with what phase of cultural development our societies are in - go back to the time of the Inquisition or the Crusades and I think the Christian nations of the time(s) were not better than the average Muslim nations on most issues.

I think societies go through various phases of societal/cultural development that are influenced by a range of things (economic development, external threats, plagues, wars, education etc). The Protestant Reformation caused 131 years of war in the West and killed a third of the population of Germany, and that had a profound effect on Western society which directly led to everyone agreeing that separating Church and State was a wonderful idea. The West has continued to liberalize over the course of the last 300 years, through a very self-conscious process that has at times been acrimonious (e.g. the US Civil War over the issue of slavery), and has slowly granted rights to women, to blacks, to gay people, etc. Consider when the US was founded less than 250 years ago there were black slaves, gays got the death penalty, and women couldn't vote or work much outside the home. The UN Declaration of Human Rights was only only 70 years ago (and the US still doesn't meet its agreed obligations with regard to healthcare for its people).

So while the West now stands as a bastion of freedom, human rights, generally good government, democracy etc. It's important to realize those are all relatively-new inventions. When we rightly critique Islamic countries for not having them, we are essentially noting that they are ~250 years of cultural development behind the West. Now US Christian conservatives in this forum like to try and claim those achievements of the modern (secular, i.e. post-reformation separation of church and state) West under the banner of 'achievements of Christianity' and being the result of the bible. However it's worth bearing in mind that Christianity existed for 1750 year prior to the development of nearly all of these 'good things' - so there was a loooooooong period of time when Christianity wasn't magically causing these great cultural achievements of the modern West to exist. So I am very skeptical of any reading of history that assigns the achievements of modern Western culture to our 'Judeo-Christian values/history', and it looks much more like the post-Reformation secularization (separation of church and state) of society, combined with outcomes of the French Revolution, plus economic developments (The Industrial Revolution), and a rising acceptance of secular utilitarian democratic government (that government should be by the people, for the people, and implement policies that have the best outcomes), and most recently a drop off in religiosity, that have together caused the things that are good about the culture of the modern West.

Islamic nations don't have that, yet. They are like children or teenagers, who haven't yet matured and developed into the adults they will naturally eventually become, like the West already has. So, women don't have many rights in Saudi Arabia... is that surprising given their current stage of cultural development? So, many Islamic nations currently don't treat gays very well? Again, not really surprising given their current stage of development. Their culture will mature and develop out of childhood/adolescence and into adulthood, probably quite rapidly I would expect. Due to globalization, and international communication, they will probably achieve in 50 years the kind of cultural development it took 250 years to achieve in the West.

[seer]

Seer it's nice to see you celebrating how accepting US Christians are of homosexuality. And Rogue's all teary eyed over the poor gay people who suffer under Sharia law.

How things change!

I'm not accepting of sin any sin, including my own, my only point was your specious comparison.