Africa will always be a third world continent

[Chris James]

Isn't it bad enough that most of the countries in Africa are run by corrupt governments...and now we have Islam. It is my firm belief that the western world will soon have to choose what it means to have relations with some of these countries.

I know the US has often chosen to follow business interests over those of human rights which only proves what bastards we can be. But it won't take too many incidents like this before the American conscience finds a relationship with Nigeria repugnant.

http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/protesters-throw-stones-disrupt-nigeria-gay-trial-21622175

In this day and age money talks and often influences the course of government. I think if our Congress is so very upset about Sharia law and Islam in general then we need to cut off the flow of money into nations like this. But don't expect it to happen soon just based upon threats to the gay population. I imagine once a few Christians have been stoned then the outcry will begin.

Hypocrisy is never more apparent when our government officials try to defend foreign governments like the one in Nigeria and Uganda. But Islam is tailor made for the uneducated masses who seek comfort in someone telling them how to live and that defines so many places on the African continent. For some of these people throwing rocks has been a part of their DNA since the dawn of time. Now they have a religious excuse to do so.

[DesDownunder]

The curse of religious authority over the lives of humans can not really be underestimated. This is not to deny that individuals have the right to believe what they want. After all, each person is on their own journey of discovery. However, when that journey is confounded by the limitations placed it by organised religion, then suffering follows, depression takes over our reason, and much of our lives are wasted in trying to sort out myth and superstition from fact.

Religion can provide an excuse for barbaric acts, and often does so in the name of a deity.

Our societies are barely capable of permitting individual freedom of thought, and in many countries such freedom is entombed in shrouds of fear, and reason is banned from any rational exercise. Rocks and stones are thrown at anything that is simply being itself because the mind has been kept primitive by the irrational fear of the different, the diverse, and the unknown.

Instead of celebrating the beauty and grandeur of life, we hide from it behind the altars on which we sacrifice our intellects and our potential to find truth, sanity and love.

Yet, the freedoms we have today were unthought of 50 or 60 years ago, and even though many people are still bound and captive by the traditions of their cultures, I think it is possible to see that we have advanced.