Ken Berwitz
With all the attention being paid to ISIS (and all of it fully justified), it is good to remind ourselves of what kind of world we would live in if these lunatics ever took over.
And the best way to do so is to note what kind of a world it is where they have taken over.
Like Iran, for example.
Excerpted from an article at billboard.com:
Adefense lawyer in Iran says six young Iranian men and womenvideotaped dancing to PharrellWilliams\’“Happy” and the video\’s director have been sentenced tosuspended jail terms and lashes.
LawyerFarshid Rofugaran said Friday the seven have been sentenced to sixmonths in jail and 91 lashes each, though the verdict won\’t becarried out unless the defendants commit crimes and are found guiltyin the future. He says the suspended jail term is the punishment foracting in the video and the lashes are over ignoring Islamic norms.
And if that doesn\’t remind you clearly enough, there is this, from an article at London\’s Independent:
Ablogger in \’poor psychological condition\’ has been sentenced todeath after being found guilty of insulting the Prophet Mohammad onFacebook.
Accordingto an \’informed source\’, speakingto the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, SoheilArabi, 30, had kept eight Facebook pages under different names andadmitted to posting material insulting to the Prophet on these pages.
MrArabi, who was arrested along with his wife in November last year byagents from the Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), is said to havewritten the “material without thinking and in poor psychologicalcondition”.
Article262 of the Islamic Penal Code states insulting the Prophet carries apunishment of death, however, article 264 of the Penal Code says if asuspect claims to have said the insulting words in anger, in quotingsomeone, or by mistake, his death sentence will be converted to 74lashes.
If we fight radical islam, we may win and we may lose. But if we don\’t, we most assuredly will lose, because radical islam will fight regardless.
And for what? To turn us into a society which punishes teenagers for dancing to music they like? Which sentences bloggers to death for expressing thoughts that the ruling religious fanatics disagree with?
There may be some people who are perfectly happy to live this way. But I\’m not one of them, and I suspect you are not one of them either.
That is why we must fight radical islam.
