Because god is just and merciful, he commands you to kill teenagers who, by some arbitrary measure, fail to show him sufficient respect. Sound like a religion you want any part of? Via the New York Times:
The teenager’s name was Muhammad al-Qatta, and he was 14 years old when witnesses said radical Islamists in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo pulled him from his coffee kiosk on Sunday and later executed him in a public square.
Muhammad had left his house to close up his kiosk, where his work supported his family, his mother said. When someone approached him looking for a free cup of coffee, the teenager uttered the phrase that cast him among the victims of the war’s growing depravity.
“He was talking to this guy and told him, ‘I don’t want to lend you anything,’ ” the teenager’s father quoted him as saying.
“If Muhammad, peace be upon him, were to come to this earth right now, I would still not lend a cup of coffee to anyone unless they pay for it,” the teenager said.
Three men with long hair, wearing long beards and the robes favored by ultraconservatives, overheard the exchange. They accused the teenager of insulting the prophet, told him to leave the kiosk and then took him away in the car. When they returned an hour later, Muhammad bore the marks of a beating. In a square, they covered his head with his shirt, a makeshift blindfold, as if he were “some big shot,” his mother said.
She watched from her balcony, as hundreds of people gathered around. A resident of the neighborhood, Abu Abdo, heard what the men said. Addressing the “respected people of Aleppo,” they warned that cursing God or the Prophet Muhammad was a sin, saying it would be “punished this way.”
The teenager’s father heard the shots. His wife told him that the men had killed their son.
[image via Syrian Free Press]
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