Dear Deli_Kizin

I agree most of your post. The quote you made is just seen as the words of Allah which lead extermists to this crooked system. It is nothing but lie about Allah, some so-called religious leaders always giving fatwa as they know better than Allah. People try to interpret Kuran through false beliefs/hadiths which totally contradicts with Kuran so it is seen there are many interpretations of Islam. It is not the fault of Islam but the fault of seyhs, cult/religious leaders. I think this is the biggest problem of today Islamic world, people who do not use their brain-intellect, hire their minds to their religious leaders and worship their leaders or prophet instead of God. Let me tell you an ironic reality of Salman Rushdie, you know there is also a fatwa given against Salman Rushdie, but the book he published “satanic verses” is not originated by Salman Rushdie(I think he named his book falsely, maybe satanic hadiths more suitable), it was taken from the stories of Tabari(923) and Ibn Sa’d(845) which seen big scholars in Islamic world(ironic huh?), it is also a tradition among christian missionaries and conservative christians to vilify the Islam through centuries and the phrase “satanic verses” firstly used by English missionary belligerent Sir William Muir(surprisingly he was also a sir ). So Salman Rushdie is maybe the last person to be blamed , muslims(especially extremists) should look at themselves firstly, how did they create this crooked system?.

This has been a very interesting conversation thus far.

However, I'd like to comment regarding the cult of virginity that exists in various cultures, including Christian and Muslim.

First, it is just about impossible to determine one's virgin state if the proof is seen to be bleeding on the wedding night by the bride. There is a problem with this is that all virgins do not bleed.

Even if the lady does bleed, is it because she was a virgin, or did she have had plastic surgery to repair a hymen?

In other words, I think much too much attention is placed on purely physical attributes.

The very tragic result is lives are ruined based on faulty expectations and information.

It reminds me of a story about a man who went to some villages and taught people about fire. He taught them how to start, how to use fire and he then went on his way.

Some years later he visited the same villages and found in one village they had fire on an alter and the worshiped it. The next village their object of worship was the veneration of the "fire bringing god", the last village the people actually cooked their food, heated their homes with fire. They took great care in how they used the fire and were careful to put it out when they were finished.

This story reminds me of the cult of the virgin. What is a virgin?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgin

I love happy faces makes me kind of happy,too!