The appeals court doubled the sentences because of the press coverage, but last minute the king pardoned both the woman and the man she was with.

Had there been no press, which is probably most cases, the sentence would have been carried out.

If we look at the murder and slavery that went hand in hand with colonialism in much of the Americas, what is the common thread?

Religion is a tool used by tyrants, and the power mad. That's the real common thread, across the world. And it's not even an essential tool. Lacking it, there's always racism and nationalism. And there are other methods.

The dictatorship of Saudi Arabia, imo, doesn't need religion to do what it wants to prop up its rule. It is mostly just convenient. It is their custom, and maybe a forgone conclusion that it will be invoked.

Haven't seen any witch trials, burning at the stake, or medieval torture chambers, yet.  So Christians 1, Muslims 0, on that front.

It's not that you have a problem with what they are doing, which is nothing new, nothing that wasn't used by Christians, it's that their religion isn't functioning in the century you prefer.  Which is an odd take considering most conservative like the good ole days, when men were men.

And surely you can understand how progressives feel when dealing with a group that is living in the past, aka conservatives.  People who think state sanctioned murder is good, who don't like women controlling their own bodies, who think war is the solution to every problem, and a zillion other antiquated ideals.

I would love if CNN has some sort of time machine camera and they could run stories side by side of Christian religious barbarianism next Muslim religious barbarianism.  I would pay a months salary to watch the right's heads explode when they realize, compared to Christians, Muslims are puppy dogs in their religious atrocity history.

FYI, the very folks you keep defending killed your beloved Jesus the same way, where is your outrage against that religion.  They killed the son of your god, surely a more important person that some Muslim cleric.  

But you defend them, and condemn other religions doing the exact same thing, well actually, beheading first seems a bit more compassionate then letting someone die nailed to a board with gigantic spikes.

How someone can hate the actions of one religious group to the point of wanting to go to war with them, yet be a member of a religion that for centuries did the exact same things...

"Are you watching these debates? Yes, the politicians are bad, but the people who egg them on. There are these crowds cheering for executions. Cheering for letting people without health insurance die. In today's Republican party there's a term for people who hate charity and love killing: Christian," Bill Maher said on his HBO series "Real Time."

It's not the religion per say but the way these majority Islamic countries conduct themselves and this is a perfect example.

Sometimes I think Islam is just the tool used for tyranny and consolidation of power and subjugation of people.  Convince people you want to control that you're the keeper of some faith, of some "truth"...be it Islam, Christianity, Communism, Capitalism, what have you...and you can get away with murder.  

It doesn't mean these belief systems are inherently bad per se, just that bad people use them as tools to do bad things, and thus convince people that evil is divine, that bad is good. An age old con-job.

Maybe Bill Maher does, but the people in congress screaming about Isis sure don't.

Mussolini had no moral claim to speak for Christianity. And, as the cleric in question is going to pay with his life for pointing out, the Saudi Royal family isn't the repository for the spirit of Islam, or anything like that.

What if the Vatican (the home of Catholicism and Christianity) was putting people on stakes?  

Those things happened when Christianity was about the same age that Islam is. I draw no inference from that, I merely note it.

And who cares if the Saudis see themselves as the Guardians of the Holy Places? The US sees ourselves as the guardians of democracy all while becoming an oligarchy and while some people work toward a theocracy.

Where some people ran with those ideas otoh...oh baby not so good at all.

I get what you are saying, but it's simply not true, people too scared to say anything are not living in peace, the are living in oppression.

We are judging them through skewed lenses, but come on, half the population having domain over the other half(women) and forcing them to do whatever they want, while not allowing them to even be in the company of a man they are not related to is not right by any definition.  

They wouldn't need ironfists if the people were content, force is how you make other people do things they do not want to do.

Huffington Post

Some key quotes...

Is it even possible to transition from hierarchical religious authoritarianism to a modernized and even secularized form of Islamic democracy -- one that accepts the separation of church and state?

While the possibility and harsh eventuality remains, this is a tall order since Islam, perhaps more than other monotheistic religions, invites itself into every aspect of social life. More specifically, Islam is inherently and by definition inconsistent with the separation of church and state.

Religiously, the concept of the separation of church and state has practically no hold in Islamic thinking. The idea is entirely foreign to most Islamic orthodoxy, and even if a political party were secular in name, they dare not forsake the basic tenets of Islam.

Turkey provides us with a perfect example of the failure to wed Islam to democracy.

It goes on.

This is what we in the Western World are up against.   People who criticize christianity more then Islam can continue to throw out historic comparisons and moral relativism and while they have a point historically it is meaningless today to compare the two.

We chose while we were still majority Christian Nations to separate the church from government.   The choice has been made and comparing the sins of what happened in the past to what's happening now is a waste of time.  

Right now the only historical examples of truly secular governments in the Islamic world are monarchies and dictators.  Even those have a tinge of Islamism.