With literal meanings, religions can be ugly (unbeautiful) and bad.
Reader comment on item: Talking Freely about the Enemy
in response to reader comment: To Mitzi Alvin

Submitted by Abhi (United States), May 9, 2009 at 15:17

Dear Rio, You say that religions are always beautiful. We would all like to believe it but how can the part of a religion that advocates chopping a person's hands committing a theft or a person to be stoned for adultry. The law that leaves no room for penance cannot be beautiful. What makes Islam less beautiful is not certain unacceptable principles in Islamic doctrine but muslim's insistence that those principles should be followed blindly.

In fact, muslims break Islamic principles according to their convenience. The follow Kuranic rules selectively and interpret them to suit their individual purposes. It is when Islam and Muslims interact with other cultures they turn stubborn and rigid because it is difficult for them to believe that good worthy of protection can exist outside of Islamic banner (Someone pointed a very enlightening comment to this effect above: http://www.danielpipes.org/blog/comments/152175.).

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