The good news is that Muslim Lee Haeng Lae has condemned the beheading although still insisting
Islam is a 'peaceful and tolerant' religion. Can only conclude he is in denial like Rev. Hong Keun-soo. Perhaps the TRUTH is too awful to face??

Posted by: Morgane at July 15, 2004 6:49 AM

"Internet Toolbox for Islam-critics":

http://www.apostatesofislam.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=661

Posted by: Ali Dashti at July 15, 2004 9:59 AM

Examples of Sharia law:

1. Offensive, military jihad against non-Muslims is a communal, religious obligation;
2. A person who is ignorant about Islamic legal opinion must follow the legal opinion of a scholar;
3. The penalty for a Muslim apostate (someone who no longer believes in or no longer follows the tenets of Islam) is death;
4. When slaughtering animals for food, a knife must be used to cut the windpipe and gullet;
5. A woman is only eligible to receive half the inheritance of a man;
6. Marriage may be forced on virgins by their father or father’s father;
7. A non-Arab man may not marry an Arab woman;
8. A woman must seek permission from her husband to leave the house;
9. A Muslim man cannot marry a woman who is a Zoroastrian, an idol worshipper, an apostate from Islam or a woman with one parent who is Jewish or Christian, with the other being Zoroastrian; a Muslim woman cannot marry anyone but a Muslim;
10. A free Muslim man may marry up to four women;
11. Retaliation is obligatory in most cases when someone is deliberately murdered except when a Muslim kills a non-Muslim, a Jew or a Christian kills a Muslim apostate or a father or mother kill their offspring;
12. Non-Muslim subjects (Ahl al-Dhimma) of a Muslim state are subject to a series of discriminatory laws – “dhimmitude”;
13. The penalty for fornication or sodomy is being stoned to death;
14. The penalty for an initial theft is amputation of the right hand. Subsequent thefts are penalized by further amputations of feet and hand;
15. A non-Muslim cannot testify against a Muslim in court; a person who is “without respectability” cannot give legal testimony; a woman’s legal testimony is only given half the legal weight of a man’s (and is only acceptable in cases involving property); to legally prove fornication or sodomy requires 4 male witnesses who actually saw the act;
16. The establishment and continuation of the Islamic Caliphate (by force, if necessary) is a communal obligation;
17. Sodomites and Lesbians must be killed;
18. Laughing too much is forbidden;
19. Musical instruments are unlawful;
20. Creating pictures of animate life is forbidden;
21. Female circumcision, which includes the excision of the clitoris, is obligatory;
22. Slavery is permitted;
23. People may be bribed to convert to Islam;
24. Beating a rebellious wife is permissible; and,
25. Lying is permissible in a time of war (or jihad).

Complete legal clauses and references for the above at:

http://boston.indymedia.org/newswire/display_any/21475

Posted by: Mentat at July 15, 2004 10:14 AM

The comment by the Korean Muslim mam (prayer leader) at Itaewonis, of course, nonsense. How can he say, with a straight face, that Islam does not condone the killing of non-Muslims? It is impossible to read the Qur'an and the hadith and come way with that conclusion. The history of Islam, a belief-system that was created in direct opposition to the religions of those peoples whom the early Arabs conquered (from within, not as is commonly believed, on horseback waving copies of the Qur'an), requires hostility toward all non-Muslims. Conversion, death, or submission to the status of dhimmi (humiliation -- see the conditions spelled out by the jurists for the payment of the jizyah for example; degradation -- it is important that the non-Muslims be made to feel, in daily life, their inferior status, in a host of ways, including legal, economic, political, and social disabilities, felt keenly' permanent insecurity -- if any one of the conditions for being a "Protected People" is believed to have been violated, even by a handful of people, or even one, that "protected" status -- "protected" against the murderous behavior of Muslims themselves -- is lost. And even where there has been full compliance, Muslim mobs and Muslim rulers have had no difficulty in finding a reason, or no reason at all, to massacre Christians and Jews -- Toledo and Damascus come to mind for the former, Grenada and Fez for the latter, but another thousand examples might equally have been given).

The Presbyterians of Korea owe their existence to the tireless efforts of the Rev. Horace Underwood, founder of the Chosen Christian College, a Johnny Appleseed of Christianity. Buddhists and Christians have coexisted amicably in Korea since then, as they have everywhere.

Islam arrived with soldiers -- Turkish soldiers during the Korean War. As every Muslim is required to be a missionary, these soldiers were no different, and some South Koreans, impressed with their undoubted bravery, and in a moment of trouble and despair, may have confused their martial steadfastness with something wonderful about Islam (even Churchill, in his celebrated and acute analysis of the fanatical and humanly-limitied aspects of Islam in "The "River War," also was careful to note the Muslim ability to face death -- not hard when you possess a fanatical faith, as both the Japanese soldiers, in the service of Hirohito and the cult of Kodo, and the Hitler Youth, so devoted to Hitler, and thrown into battle in the last months of World War II, both demonstrated.

That this Imam is not only a Muslim, but can refuse to recognize that Islam has been the chief destroyer of Buddhism (never mind its attacks on Christians and Christianity) all over Asia -- look not only at the Bamiyan Buddhas, but the more than millennium of mayhem, murder, and mischief that destroyed the Greco-Buddhist civilization of Afghanistan, and every cache of sacred Buddhist texts, virtually every artifact (my pathetic catalogue of the contents of the museum in Kabul, from the 1960s, is practically pamphlet-sized -- and even its contents were destroyed by the Taliban), that destroyed tens of thousands of Buddhist temples in India, that was reponsible for eliminating Buddhism as a living creed throughout much of Central Asia -- how can he, with a straight face, say such things?

And as for the Christian clergyman, taking a leaf from what nonsensical book -- the Archbishop of Canterbury? John Esposito, who has taught the apologetics of Islam at two Jesuit institututions? Diane Eck, who from her comfortable perch at Harvard Divinity School stoutly defends Islam (curious sympathy indeed, given that her book-for-tenure was a memoir disguised as scholarship, of her year in Benares, the holy city of Hinduism, and that her own existence would not be permitted under the Sharia for one minute)and a well-funded "Pluralism Project" that, of course, ignores that in America's wonderful pluralist culture, there is one belief-system that is resolutely opposed (except insofar as, temporarily, it is required to disguise that opposition, until Islam is more thoroughly established) to genuine pluralism.

Both clergymen here are wrong. But the Muslim is a flat-out liar; the Christian probably merely a useful idiot. There are so very many, of both kinds.

Posted by: Hugh at July 15, 2004 10:46 AM

The Korean Imam Lee probably also had nationalist reasons for showing a united front with Christians and others.

Korean Presbyterianism was also a great destroyer of Buddhism, too--albeit by preaching and ethical example that drew Buddhists into Christian conversion.

Posted by: Kepha1 at July 16, 2004 7:12 AM