Iran: 130 lashes for drinking two beers.

Leave it to Muslim "justice" to mete out punishment proportionate to the crime.

If we've got this straight now, you, your normal Muslim in Iran, stray off the divine reservation a bit and it's the cat for you, me hearty.^[1] (Be sure to catch the photo!) Stoning or plucking out an eye are the probable penalties for three beers.

However, . . . . . . . . . . if you make your government into the world's foremost sponsor of terrorism, that's entirely consistent with the tenets of Islam.

Am I right so far?

Or if you run a school for young people to become suicide bombers you become a high official in this government?

Or if the Founding Father of the country sanctions "sexual pleasure from a child as young as a baby" (including intercourse) and sanctions sex with horses, mules, donkeys, cows, ewes, or camels, that's not a violation of any principle of the sharia?^[2]

Mercy! If mastering the sharia isn't an uplifting experience we frankly don't know what is. Although, rummaging around in the city dump after one's girlfriend mistakenly throws out your all-time favorite pair of old sneakers might rival the experience.

Notes
^[1] "Whipped for two beers." Aftenpost, 5/15/07 <-- Clarity & Resolve. Catch Patrick's apt comment at the end of his post.
^[2] Apparently, the meat of sodomized horses, mules, or donkeys is "strictly forbidden" (although not the sodomy) and if the animal was alive when sodomized it must be taken outside the city and sold. (The rather attractive alternative available to devout Iranian Muslims does not require removal of the animal past the city limits, which we take as nothing less than a prima facie case for how much the sharia takes into account life's practical realities.)