27 January 2011

We should not absolve Islam of the crimes committed in its name

.... asked a representative from the Muslim Council of Britain if he agreed with the sentence handed down in Bangladesh on that 16-year-old girl. He was pretty clear that it was a ‘monstrous interpretation’ of Islamic law regarding the strictures against sex outside of marriage.

But it is hardly an uncommon monstrous interpretation, if it is a monstrous interpretation at all, rather than a perfectly rational interpretation. In any case, he accepted that it was an attempted interpretation of Islam — in other words, that the inspiration for the lashing of that abused child was drawn from the ideology, even if it was an inspiration based on a misapprehension. [Spectator] Read more [via National Secular Society]