What sort of religion behaves like this?

[Horus]

What sort of barbaric religion behaves like this in a civilised world?

A pregnant woman has been sentenced to be hanged by a Sudanese court for converting to Christianity.

Mariam Yahya Ibrahim, 27, who is being held in detention with her 20-month-old son, had been ordered to abandon her faith and return to Islam.

She has also been charged with adultery for marrying a Christian man.

The death sentence was handed down despite appeals by Western embassies for compassion and respect for religious freedom.

At a court in Khartoum, Judge Abbas al Khalifa said: "We gave you three days to recant but you insist on not returning to Islam. I sentence you to be hanged."

He also sentenced her to 100 lashes for "adultery".

Born to a Muslim father, the woman was convicted under the Islamic sharia law that has been in force in Sudan since 1983, and outlaws conversions under threat of death.

She is married to a Christian national of South Sudan, which won independence in 2011 after decades of civil war.

Earlier in the hearing, an Islamic religious leader spoke with her in the caged dock for about 30 minutes, trying to convince her to change her mind.

But she told the judge: "I am a Christian and I never committed apostasy."

Following her sentence, one of her lawyers Mohanad Mustafa said they would seek to overturn the ruling on appeal.

About 100 people, including Western embassy representatives, were in court to hear the sentence.

The United States, Canada, Britain and the Netherlands have all expressed "deep concern" over her case.

Amnesty International said she had been condemned to death for offences that should not be considered crimes at all, and condemned the sentences as "abhorrent".

Manar Idriss, Amnesty International's Sudan researcher, said: "The fact that a woman has been sentenced to death for her religious choice, and to flogging for being married to a man of an allegedly different religion is appalling and abhorrent.

"Adultery and apostasy are acts which should not be considered crimes at all. It is flagrant breach of international human rights law."

[Grandad]

The human rights argument is one that is often used for entirely the wrong reasons, usually to protect villains from persecution if they are returned to their own country. Send them back I say and let them face 'justice' in their own country rather than live on comfortable benefits in this or other western countries.

But this case of Mariam Yahya Ibrahim is entirely different and an example where her human rights should allow her to make her own decisions about her life and how she lives it. I hope that public international opinion can reverse this decision but I fear that will not be the case. The west is often told not to interfere on matters that don't concern them.

I have great concern that sharia law or a form of it, is already practiced (undercover) in the UK. We hear of family feuds and murders amongst the Muslim communities and secret FMG, and other enforced behaviour that seems to have sharia undertones.

Be aware, be very aware, as such practices gain in frequency....

[LovelyLadyLux]

Totally completely beyond the realm. I really don't have words strong enough to adequately describe how I feel. I honestly do not 'hate' any religion but this spawn'd ******* of Satan belief system (I can't even consider to call this a religion. That dignifies it too much) that can exert this type of power over anybody is beyond belief.

"We" or "Us" in the west are the only ones speaking out about this concern and the vast majority of those in the Muslim world remain silent. Can't help but make me think that there is MORE going on there than is outwardly known i.e. FGM, arranged marriages, killings etc.

I really WANT to believe that the majority of Muslims are nice law abiding people - BUT ??

I'm in agreement with you Grandad that 'we' have to be very careful. I don't believe the future bodes well. I recently posted a thread re: Sharia law/Islam in Brussels. If that is not a really REAL WARNING I'm not too sure what is. We have 50% of the Muslim world (male) believing they are Gods/Kings/Tops of the Heap able to make all decisions and do anything they want (specifically with regard to their women and families) and then we have the other 50% kept totally and completely subservient, mostly uneducated, uninformed without any real power at all in any sense. Throw in a few crazy Mullahs & Imams adhering to a law that is completely contrary to any human rights and decency and we've got what we've got now.

[Glyphdoctor]

Religion doesn't behave like this, people do. This is a case of the judge not following the religion in my opinion. Islam says all children are born Muslim, regardless of their parents' religion, You all were born Muslim too. However, their religion is determined by how their parents raise them. This woman had a Muslim father and Christian mother and her father abandoned the family and she was raised by her mother as Christian. That to me makes her Christian, not a Muslim apostate. If anyone made a mistake here it is her deadbeat dad. She should not be executed.

However, these situations are quite tricky. I know a couple, the wife has an obviously Muslim name because her father (not Egyptian) was Muslim but like this woman, she was raised by her European mother after the parents divorced as a Christian. She was dating a non-Muslim foreigner here in Cairo and got pregnant. They had to get married, or it would be a big problem for her to give birth here as a single unmarried "Muslim" yet they couldn't marry here because he wasn't Muslim either. They had to quickly research a country where they could marry and get marriage licenses that would be vague enough with the info that they would not have any problems to stay in Egypt as a married couple and register the child's birth. Fortunately, they found a country and it worked out for them, they had their first child here and lived here for a year or two more after the birth without any issues.

[Horus]

I take your points Glyph and some of them are quite enlightening, but what I really object to is any religion that says that I “was born” into it, no I was not! I object and refute without any question any doctrine that tells me that I was born into their particular brand of religion, to me they are all deluded to the extreme. Of course Islam is not alone in this the Mormons for example have a similar ploy of baptising us all (without our consent of course) into their religion after we die, so I suppose by using that yardstick a lot of Muslims are Mormons after they die and spend eternity as Mormons.

It is the same thing we are getting now in the UK regarding Halal meat, four large supermarkets were discovered to be selling it without any labelling to say how it was produced. No doubt their logic was it will be OK for Muslims and if we don’t tell the other religions then they will not mind. Well actually I mind very much and although not entirely happy about all abattoirs I do at least know that UK ones have a set of rules they should comply with and one is that the animal must be stunned unconscious before slaughter. Some abattoirs are being allowed to cut the animals throat before stunning and have some guy recite a prayer over it to make it halal, again to comply with a religious dictate. I object to eating halal meat in principle as to me it has inflicted some additional suffering to the animal and I object to that. So basically no one has the right to tell me that I belong to some religion or should eat food produced for the satisfaction of someone else’s religion either. People are free to choose to what religion they wish to belong to or not as the case may be and not have some religion they do not, or once belonged to overriding their own wishes and beliefs. It would seem in this case that the true meaning of the word Islam “submission” is very true in this case ”submit to our religion or we hang you”

Utterly barbaric and something I could excuse in a poorly developed country, but unfortunately even in a modern 21st century world with space travel, medical advances that are beyond comprehension and global communication and a general acceptance and tolerance of other rights and beliefs, that we still have a major religion that can hold views that belong in the dark ages.

[Glyphdoctor]

Most of your halal meat in the UK comes from New Zealand. They obviously have no issue with producing it there. Brazil is also a big exporter of halal meat and chicken. I can understand having issues about the slaughter methods from a technical standpoint of how it is done, but making a fuss about the religious aspect seems to me to be simple paranoia and prejudice. And I doubt the supermarkets were actually aiming for the Muslim market because any Muslim who cared about halal would expect it to be labeled as such or else how do Muslims know they aren't getting non-Halal meat just like how do you know you are getting it? The countries exporting this meat find it easier to satisfy all their various markets simply slaughtering it by halal methods. Then they can export it to Egypt or the UK depending on changing demand. It's a business decision on the part of the exporting countries I am sure, not a religious one.

And I think this issue is a very specifically UK hangup. In the US, kosher meat products, which are slaughtered similar to halal, is seen by a lot of non-Jews as superior to regularly slaughtered and prepared meat products and are prominently labelled as such. In fact, it's a big selling point in the general market, especially for hot dogs. There is a hot dog brand called Hebrew National and they used to run television commercials where a man appeared on the screen with a long white beard and pointed to the sky and bragged about how they "answered to a higher authority" when it came to quality, so there was no secret about the Jewish and Biblical angle, yet this made their hot dogs highly sought after by non-Jews.

As for the Mormons baptizing our dead ancestors, so what? If you don't believe in their religious views then you would just see them as wasting their time. Their baptizing efforts have generated a lot of information about genealogy and they make that available to anyone for research for free, which I think is rather generous of them.

[Grandad]

Glyph, I think the Halal thing comes down to us 'soppy' Brits and our love of animals. By and large, animals in this country are treated much more humanely in life than in most other countries and we like to think that they will be treated humanely in death.

I see absolutely nothing wrong with that and would personally prefer NOT to eat Halal products knowing that the creature has probably suffered, albeit for a very short time. And what reciting some arabic phrase at the time of death has to do with it, escapes me.

[Glyphdoctor]

5 seconds of suffering at the end or a whole year of living in cramped conditions? Do we really know whether the animal we eat has suffered unless we raise it and slaughter it ourselves? I bought Sudanese beef last week. Maybe it got its throat slit at the end but it probably enjoyed free range munching on grass in a pasture and no hormone/antibiotic injections throughout its life, which is highly unlikely for any of the meat you are getting at your supermarkets, halal or not. Not eating meat at all for ethical reasons I can understand, but saying that one steak wrapped up in plastic and frozen that was shipped from halfway around the globe is more humane than another seems to me to be more about having one's steak while assuaging one's guilt at the same time.

I recommend watching animal documentaries. Then you will see that there's no method of human slaughter that comes anywhere close to the brutality of a lion or a hyena or hawk. Some eat and others get eaten. At some level, that's all that life is about. We wouldn't be here if we didn't accept that.

[Choccy]

"You were all born Muslim" Can you explain this Glyph? Have I misread something in the post?

[LovelyLadyLux]

Personally on the halal vs kosher vs plain old domestic animal meat I honestly have to say I don't care and mostly when I shop for meat I buy it by 'price' in that I usually look for leanest at the best price. I also tend to buy (in this order) fish, chicken or turkey, pork, beef. AND that being said I probably only eat meat 2 or 3 times per week and minimally. I can honestly go months and only eat fish with just the odd chunk of animal meat thrown in there. I love goat 'cept we don't get it in this area, have eaten horse (when it was sold which is was years ago) AND in my neck of the woods we get lots of wild meat and I honestly can't vouch at all for how humanely a hunter has killed his prey.

As for religion - firstly I have to say I have never really personally practiced any religion. I've been interested from time to time during my life and have done fairly extensive readings and studies (even Islam )

As for religion I'm in agreement it's a man made construct. My problem with Islam (and lots of other religions - Amish, Mormon, the devout Christian spare the rod spoil the child Bible Thumping Fundamentalists) is that they seem (am using the word seem in context of 'seems to me') they are literally translating a religion or belief system that was developed in a different day for a different time and they're failing to allow the belief system to evolve and adapt to the world of people's needs today (i.e. birth control and the Catholic church).

I think that small group(s) have hi-jacked a mainstream religion and are now using it for their own power or aggrandizement or control or whatever it is to the extreme that they're now robbing people of their basic human rights. The case Horus highlights is abhorrent and should have never reached even close to where it is now. I'd love to see mainstream Islam speak out against these cases. I think that would go a long way for the rest of us to be able to identify all the regular, normal, just like us Islamic people who are shocked and appalled by cases like this. It would also put pressure on the radical elements to know they're not getting tacit support from the majority. **By the way this issue just hit the US News this morning and they do have speakers from Amnesty Internation talking - but - do the Sudanese Court really care what the rest of the world thinks about them and their proceedings?

As to being born into a religion - well - Muslim, Catholic, Jewish, Amish, Mormon etc. technically we're "socialized" in a religion via familial and peer relations and connections. Later in life we may 'chose' a religion but as babes in arms and kids we're socialized.

Interesting discussion

[Horus]

but making a fuss about the religious aspect seems to me to be simple paranoia and prejudice.

Now hold on there Glyph we used to have another member who would chuck in the old racist or paranoia rubbish usually as he was losing his own argument. We would have a typical riposte about say some country being cruel to children for example and he would counter it with something like “In the UK they would send children up chimneys in the days of Charles Dickens” or some other daft example of making it alright today by quoting an example from a couple of centuries past and applying it to what should be the 21st century and more enlightened thinking.

So if me making a fuss about it doesn’t matter, then equally a Muslim should not make a fuss about eating none halal meat, it cuts both ways, no pun intended. If I started up my ‘Church of the Seventh Day Diabolists’ and slaughtered a few sheep and chickens at a black mass, would you or the average Muslim be prepared to eat it? I doubt it very much, but if as you say it doesn’t matter and I do something similar and start to put the product unlabelled into the food chain then it should not offend any Muslims and to be fair they cannot object because as you say any real Muslim would ensure what the provenance of the meat was before consumption. So it again begs the question why is it being slaughtered in this way if no real Muslim would buy it without a label to say how it was slaughtered, just what kind of Muslim buys it then? A pretend Muslim? A part time Muslim? Or maybe a Muslim of inferior beliefs to the Muslims who check the provenance before eating? So if what you are saying is true, then there is no need for it in the first place, so why produce it this way?

As I said at the OP, I object to being force fed meat slaughtered in a method I disapprove of and certainly don’t want someone reciting fairy stories over it just to comply with another’s dietary requirements. So no Glyph, I am not being paranoid or prejudiced, I am stating my objections to a particular practice done in the name of a religion and I have every right to make that objection.
To me it is just another archaic hangover and serves no practical purpose and I doubt very much if the sheep appreciates it is being thanked for giving up its life, unless it can speak that is.

As to me watching a few animal documentaries to see what happens in the wild I would say two things. Firstly the two have no comparison as the animal doing the killing in the wild has no option but to use the weapons that evolution gave it, we as sentient human beings do have that option and I choose to cause as little pain and suffering as possible to any animal slaughtered for my consumption. Secondly, as I spent a good part of my life in Africa I have probably seem more Lions, Leopards, and other big cats killing their prey in the wild than you have and I never once saw any of them muttering a prayer in the Antelopes ear as they killed it, but in the main they kill as quickly as they can, but I doubt that any animal suffers remotely like the examples I could post on here of sheep strapped to motorbikes, car roof racks and god knows what other forms of transport and treated in the most appalling way and then slaughtered in the street to satisfy a religious requirement, it is an archaic practice in a modern world and I do not want to be a party to it and that is my choice, not someone elses.

[LovelyLadyLux]

This is just a throw in random thought I had sparked via Horus' last comment -

Other than the actual mode of killing an animal does the "prayer" part of halal have anything to do with consumerism/marketing? I.e. if any practicing Muslim could say their own prayer over the dead animal meat once purchased it would sure free up lots more meat sources for purchase. Is the necessity of having to have an Imam pray over an animal/chicken a way of controlling the market and thus keeping the $$ more controlled and high?

[Grandad]

LLL, the whole Halal thing is a mockery in the UK at least. We have been shown on TV an Halal abattoir where the slaughterer says some Islamic words before slitting the animals neck. He is certainly NOT a man of religion, just an abattoir worker. Random animals ARE stunned before death so that the meat can be fed into the general food chain, the argument being that you don't know how the animal was killed so whether you eat Halal or not the chances are you will be eating your preferred type.
A sort of Russian roulette And not acceptable to me. And what really angers me is the way the government and other agencies, pussy foot to the whims of mostly immigrant communities. Why the hell should we have their ways and practices IMPOSED on us.

To me these are thin ends of suspicious wedges and, as I said earlier in this thread, Be aware, be very aware, as such practices gain in frequency....

I suppose my words make me look racist. That I am certainly not. But I do object to minority practices being imposed on the majority.

[LovelyLadyLux]

I'd never heard word one about any halal issues. This is the first time I've heard anything about it and 'yes' I do think that just talking about something like this runs one the risk of being labelled racist. The far left are using the R word like a sword of power and any benign reference to anything can spark the flashpoint for them to whip the label out.

I'm not sure though re: halal meat and how it arrives at being halal is an issue I can stir up emotion and thought about. Partly I guess it is because I don't care enough about this matter but maybe it is also cause our stores have not ever done this OR maybe they are and just haven't been caught at it. I do think to myself what if suddenly I find out all the meat I've bought in the past year has really been halal and I didn't know? Somehow just doesn't seem a big enough issue or matter for me or to me to have a hard and fast opinion about.

I think nowadays everything is being run on exception management. Any person anywhere who verbalizes a concern about anything now has to be kowtow'd to and EVERYTHING has to be changed to accommodate this one person and often this one person is an immigrant and/or in the minority.

I do think in the coming times we're going to have to be extremely careful or we're going to all find ourselves on a real super slippery slope.

Nobody seems to realize that the freedoms we now enjoy can be snapped away in a micro second and the fight to have them return long, arduous and time consuming IF once gone they ever can be returned.

I'm still more shocked and appalled by a Court condemning anybody for their belief system. Not sure what kind or type of pressure needs to be applied to the Sudanese Gov't and Courts to get this entire matter thrown out and the woman released to live her life.

[Glyphdoctor]

A green salad is halal, and kosher and also acceptable to Hindus and fasting Coptic Christians. Is that a reason to not eat it? Everything a Muslim is allowed to eat is halal, not just meat slaughtered a certain way, so if you want to avoid halal food, you are going to have to avoid a lot more than meat. Would you avoid a veggie burger at MacDonald's in the UK on the grounds that the main reason they added it to their menu was to attract Hindu customers? Would you avoid a glass of juice offered to you by a Mormon because it has no caffeine or alcohol and therefore is acceptable in their religion? Would you refuse some sweets made by a Coptic Christian with oil instead of butter because it happened to be a time of the year they are fasting? If you were visiting Christian friends for a meal and they decided to say Grace over the meal would you get up and walk out?

Is religion contagious and you catch it from food and as an atheist you must avoid being putting in such situations? If the reason you won't eat or drink something is because it just happens to be acceptable to a certain religion you don't practice, then that is as much following a dogma as a religious prohibition on food, but it is a dogma you derive from dogmas you don't even agree with, which seems quite silly.

When we were in the US we used to stock up on matzoh at Passover time because it went on sale then and made a good substitute for an Egyptian bread that was not available. So what if it was made by Jews? So what if it was made as part of their religious holiday traditions?

I just can't even fathom avoiding a food just because it is related the traditions and beliefs of a group I don't belong to. That's their business if they want to do something a certain way and it doesn't affect me or prevent me from consuming it. What a loss it would be to limit oneself that way.

[Ruby Slippers]

GD, I do understand your point but you are saying 'live with it' to one section of society but not to the other! If we in the majority groups have to ignore it, then why can't the minority groups?

[Horus]

Ruby Slippers wrote:

GD, I do understand your point but you are saying 'live with it' to one section of society but not to the other! If we in the majority groups have to ignore it, then why can't the minority groups?

Quite simply RS, Islam is a religion of conquest, to them the Kuffars (us the none believers) do not matter, everything must 'submit' to Islam, hence the real meaning of the word, there is no such thing as compromise, when in Rome and all that.

But I am afraid that Glyphs reply doesn’t even hold water it is a totally spurious reply to justify her own position. Nowhere has anyone said that they object to anyone else’s religion, the objection is to the production of halal meat and of it being sold in a surreptitious way to people who object to the way it is produced. It has absolutely nothing to do with eating salads or anything else, my salad grows quite happily and does not have a prayer said over it as it has its throat slit and what gives your chosen religion the temerity to suggest that because a Muslim can eat salads et al that a salad is essentially a Muslim food and therefore halal? Christians were eating greens long before the Islamic faith was born so is it not the other way around? Just because you happen to deem a green salad as halal please don’t presume that the rest of the world is complying with your religious beliefs by eating a salad, as I said, you have no monopoly on greens, vegetables or meat.

Is religion contagious and you catch it from food and as an atheist you must avoid being putting in such situations?

Again where did religion come into this halal debate? I personally object to the method of slaughter and don’t see why I should condone this method by knowingly eating it, I would object to it regardless of which religion was inflicting the cruelty. But as an aside I would ask you the same question that you asked of me “Is religion contagious?” Well Islam seems to think so and will happily hang a pregnant woman who they deem to be an apostate because she rejected its teachings and dogma and wished to be a Christian and they consider that it may infect their own followers unless they take action to prevent others from doing the same thing. This was the original thrust of this thread the murder of a woman because she became infected by another religious belief, ergo Christianity .

I just can't even fathom avoiding a food just because it is related the traditions and beliefs of a group I don't belong to. That's their business if they want to do something a certain way and it doesn't affect me or prevent me from consuming it. What a loss it would be to limit oneself that way.

Again Glyph is using a totally unrelated argument to support her case, we are all aware that Jewish traditions and practices closely resemble Islamic ones regarding dietary restrictions so there is no conflict in that area so her example is false. So let us look at this a bit closer, would you be prepared to eat something containing a pork derivative? No I thought not, so there goes your statement of “and it doesn't affect me or prevent me from consuming it” because it would. Our tradition is to have pork on Boxing Day as the main meal, you are cordially invited to partake in it.

If you were visiting Christian friends for a meal and they decided to say Grace over the meal would you get up and walk out?

No I would not, but neither would I feel obliged to take part in it either if I were not a practicing Christian, but what has any of your reply got to do with me or other people being sold meat produced in a cruel manner that we object to? I would object to someone killing chickens by stamping on their heads regardless of any prayers said to the chicken by any religious groups.

[Glyphdoctor]

As I said at the OP, I object to being force fed meat slaughtered in a method I disapprove of and certainly don’t want someone reciting fairy stories over it just to comply with another’s dietary requirements.

Let's leave aside the slaughter methods for a second because I can understand and respect that, but what exactly does someone reciting something you think is just fairy tales over the food make you unwilling to eat it? How does it physically affect the food or affect you in a negative way? I can understand that you think the practice of invoking God itself is nonsense and I don't take issue with you over that, but to say you won't eat something because of some words that you think are meaningless have been spoken in the vicinity of the food I find rather bizarre.

If I sat down at a table to eat with people of a different religion and they chose to say a prayer over/about the food before we ate, I would not consider the food made inedible or less desirable in any way. If it is important to them, that's fine by me. It's so common around the world:
http://spiritualityhealth.com/articles/ ... ound-world

[Horus]

And where did I say that it was the reciting of a prayer that made halal meat less desirable to me? Let me reiterate so as to avoid you from continually veering off the path of what my objection to halal meat is in order to suit your own argument.

“I object to the practice of slitting any animals throat without it first being stunned unconscious”

I do agree that praying over an animal about to be killed is to my mind just Mumbo Jumbo and no more than just another ritual in common with many other religions around the world. If someone wishes to recite Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer over it afterwards then that is of little concern to me and it has about the same value in my opinion.

Not sure why you posted the link as it tells me nothing I don’t already know and already dismissed as bunkum. I do not need to thank any mythical superior creator for my food as I don’t believe any such entity exists in the first place, so why would I bother to do so? If you wish to believe in Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy or Roger Rabbit then that is your choice, but I don’t have to agree that thanking Santa Claus for my dinner whilst slitting an animals throat is normal, so why would your own particular religious practices be deemed to be so to me?

As I said you can label it as being blessed by Santa Claus, Roger Rabbit or the Tooth Fairy or by an Imam, you can sing songs, dance around it naked if you wish and perform satanic rituals, it makes little difference to me and neither can it make the meat any better or purer, but if that is what you believe then carry on, only despatch the animal in the most painless and humane manner which is something we aspire to doing in our country, not always satisfactorily, but at least we try, so why should our abattoir rules be debased to suit your religious practices? We have the right in this country to purchase food that has been ethically reared as in ‘free range’ eggs & chickens and not battery cage produced, we have the same choice for other meats and even for our vegetables being organic and not grown with chemicals, so why should we not be able to choose the method that was used to kill our meat? why do you object to my right to object?

[Ruby Slippers]

I have a strong feeling that there is much more to this topic than the original posting - and it's veering away from it. Maybe time to start a new one?