Religion of no compulsion.

Alternative title: ISLAM IN ACTION.

Christian dispute with Muslim neighbor, Lahore, Pakistan -- death penalty, Lahore District Court.

Christian dispute with Muslim neighbor, Kansas City, Kansas -- tongue lashing by Judge Judy or Dr. Laura. Maybe. (But guaranteed multiple cardiac arrests over at NPR.)

Pakistani law -- not a fatwa from some malevolent, uneducated, ignorant imam -- calls for hanging or life imprisonment for "offending Muhammad and the Koran," in the words of the source. How Mohammed was able to communicate his wounded feelings from his seat at the right hand of Allah to anyone in Lahore has not been made clear, nor by what mechanism the Koran itself could be offended. But Muslim countries are so advanced we assume there are ways of doing this that are beyond our ken, grounded as we are in our disabling Western rationalism.

In this Lahore backyard brouhaha, Younis Masih had a Muslim neighbor who insisted that he perform Muslim religious rites rather than the Christian ones he preferred. (This is sort of a carbon copy of what to expect if Muslims gain any kind of a critical mass anywhere else in the world. "Minnesota Muslim airport cab driving f____s" is a phrase that comes to our mind, as it may to yours.) As the case demonstrates, it's as much as your life is worth to have a difference of opinion with an interfering, busybody Muslim neighbor.

Let us restate that. It's as much as your life is worth in this particular Muslim land to refuse to practice Islamic rites if you're not a Muslim.

As Mr. Masih's lawyer makes clear, the government's (sic!!) case rested on hearsay evidence. Which is to say, that if you piss off your neighbor on, oh, any topic, the neighbor can lodge a complaint with the police and, shazam, you're convicted in court of injuring the feelings of Mohammed -- dead some one thousand three hundred and seventy-four years by our count -- and a book. Who knew that books have feelings? We didn't know this, we confess. What we can learn from the East!

Note to self: Never, ever visit the East and don't ever engage in a doctrinal dispute with a Muslim on his home turf lest you be killed by a government court.

Additional note to self: Argue with a Muslim over anything and you risk the death penalty. ("Dr. Siddiqi, I think you've miscalculated the molecular weight of that tandoori chicken sauce. No, wait, excuse me. Of course, I find no errors in your work. How silly of me.")

Bat Y'eor documents how Muslim lands have rid themselves of Christians over the centuries. Odds are, the mechanism is something like the one above. And the wonder is that anyone is the least surprised that Muslim lands in toto have contributed to the world's scientific, technical, legal, and social thought an equivalent of something less than the plastic pocket comb. Or is it the pill box marked with the days of the week so you don't forget your meds? It could be a major contribution like that.

Nothing surprises us when it comes to Muslim "jurisprudence." Doesn't it take four eyewitnesses to adultery before the transgressors can be stoned (sic) to death? But they can always be found. We never thought that dalliances on the wrong side of the blanket took place with other people in the room but apparently this is commonplace in Muslim lands. (Additional note to self: check clothes closet and under bed before afternoon delight.) So evidently, rustling up witnesses to swear to what they couldn't have seen or words they never heard is a relatively easy proposition in advanced Muslim countries.

The really sad, the really pathetic part about all of this is that there is actually a law on the books in Pakistan like this. Even if you piss off the Prophet or offend the Koran its very own sef in front of a rolling IMAX film camera, that law just shouldn't be there in the first place.

Even if you got rid of such state penalties you'd still have the naked terror of the sharia to contend with and extra judicial pronouncements by the lads. Now we're talking of the Glory of Islam as a whole.

And we're impressed.

Yes, we are.

"Another Christian condemned to death for blasphemy, without any proof." AsiaNews.it, 05/31/07.

ADDENDUM:

Not long ago, they used often to be jostled in the streets of Cairo, and sometimes beaten merely for passing on the right hand of a Muslim. At present, they are less oppressed; but still they scarcely ever dare to utter a word of abuse when reviled or beaten unjustly by the meanest Arab or Turk; for many a Jew has been put to death upon a false and malicious accusation of uttering disrespectful words against the Kur-an or the Prophet. It is common to hear an Arab abuse his jaded ass, and, after applying to him various opprobrious epithets, end by calling the beast a Jew.

Edward William Lane, author of An Account of the Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians (1836; revised, 1860) and translator of The Thousand and One Nights. Quoted in Encountering Islam. By Algis Valiunas, The Claremont Institute, Spring 2007.

Muslim society then as now has excelled at institutionalizing legal uncertainty -- if not pure terror -- for infidels. The infidel is never more than one sentence away from legal and personal disaster: "He insulted the Prophet!"

(Aside: Note, above, Muslim views of Jews more than a 100 years before the creation of the state of Israel. The Arab hatred of Jews thus has nothing to do with Zionism or colonialism. No, it exists today in its Supersized, Industrial Strength form, simply because Arabs have been bested in every way by these very dhimmi, infidel bastards whom they abhorred and subjugated ad libidum in centuries past. The same is true for Muslim hatred of the Christian West. The very least of men has risen up to subjugate their former enemies.

It's a bitter pill that just cannot be swallowed.

Not ever.

Especially not ever because the Islamic drag on rationality -- and it's precious children science, technology, and a rule of law enforced by an independent, secular judiciary -- will not allow the creation of new and healthy outlets for the creativity and intelligence of individual Muslims in Muslim societies. Thus, we witness the endless loop of Muslim exposure to reality and resulting escape from reality into psychological displacement reinforcing existing stagnation leading to fresh contact with new aspect of same reality followed by more urgent need for escape.

Islam -- really and truly "Stuck on Stupid.")