Stars for that.

You might be a redneck if you considered converting to Islam because their religion says it's okay to beat your wife.

What's really weird is that Muslim guys are so often bottoms....not that I'd know....

An entire religion based on the ability to grow a beard, which totally screws the Irish whiteys like me who can grow the Three Musketeers goatee and literally nothing else.

Actually one of them was an Indonesian guy with a very sparse beard. Apparently the official Sunni beard is a full growth on the chin and a clipped moustache and sideburns, with short hair, while Shiites can wear a kind of designer stubble without any theological issues. Ahmadis don't seem too worried about beards at all. I'm not sure about Sufis, although I suspect they are quite laid back too.

I think that is what ultimately separates Islam (middle-eastern variety) from most other belief systems (Hindu as a possible exception, but again middle-eastern). Most other belief system's leadership has adjusted to match the times. There are always fringe elements that are radical, but the "party-line" has been changed over time to match socially acceptable behavior or rationalized into a less eccentric form.

garcet, I think you are over generalizing Islam and ignoring the many counter examples to your idea in Christianity. There are many Muslims who reject wife beating and beard growing, and may even have a drink or two once in a while. Conversley, have you ever heard of this institution called the Catholic Church? They used to be a pretty big deal, and still are in some respects. Do you know when they softened their no-condoms-at-all-ever stance? Last week. Do you know when mainstream western society did? They started to last century.

Let's be fair, Christ and his ministry were more or less an outgrowth of a poor culture that had seen better days and was basically being forced to learn to adapt to the globalizing activities of the the Roman Empire, had he actually been a military Messiah, his cult would have been fairly swiftly smashed and it would have been remembered as a political movement, if remembered at all. The best thing Christianity had, as opposed to other nascent religions of the time, was that it appealed to the poor (due to a removal of the need for sacrifices, which were costly), it had promises of a better life following this one (which is attractive to a poor Roman provincial) and it was largely inoffensive to the Roman populace at large, with the exception of the Imperial cultus. It was in a good niche for expansion.

Islam, similarly, had a good niche. It united the warring tribes of a Neolithic society that had only recently started to interact with the Iron Age outside of it's horizons, it introduced a fairly advanced concept of economy, and it made it possible to live in a frankly inhospitable part of the planet with at least the insurance that even if water was tight, you were still within pilgrimage distance of a place with water, where you knew you wouldn't be abused.

Christianity is well suited to the European environment and Islam is well suited to the Middle Eastern environment. If Christians had introduced rules about wife beating, it would be something we pretend to agree with but ignore anyway, like our cultural opinion on pro-life matters.

I recognize that. I am still outraged that that is where they left it. It's the modern age, and they are still saying a husband should be able to beat his wife -- as if she belonged to him like a possession.

Speaking as a man who sits down and cries the moment there's a problem, this video saddens me.

Gonna cry about it, huh?

See, your Muslim, he'll beat his wife like dis.

But you're average American, he'll go 'head and bash that old lady like dis.

What does that leave you with? Spanking? Punching her in the stomach and on the arms and legs?

Wish I hadn't asked now....

*supposed to be a reply to oddeye.