Roddross72,
This is a touchy subject and is just about at the line for this site. However, I will leave it here as this is the "Rants and Raves" section.
As long as you brought them up however, the Crusades and the Inquisitions were centuries ago. Women cannot leave their homes without a male family member in Saudi Arabia (the home of Mecca and Medina) in 2008. Women must be covered completely outside the home, and they cannot drive a car
today.
While the US is clearly a Christian nation (separation of Church and State notwithstanding), Muslims and Jews are free to practice their faiths publicly. Jews are not even allowed to enter the Kingdom. It is prohibited by Saudi law. Few nations governed by
Sharia offer true freedoms to "People of the Book" despite the Qur'an's teachings of tolerance of such people. And even when they do offer some amount of liberty to Christians, Jews are often not given the same. Jewish communities existed in Baghdad, Tehran, and Damascus for perhaps 2000 years but their are only a few Jews left in those places, generally those to old and infirm to emigrate. The synagogues are in mothballs in those places, if even they still stand.
You pick on the numbers of Blacks on death rows in the US. Numbers do not exist in a vacuum. Look carefully at who were the victims in those crimes. Most also were Black. There was a time when the death penalty was applied very infrequently in the victim was not White. Without getting into a debate about the social situation and problems of minorities in America, I would invite you for a visit to my area. I'll take you to the 'hood. I live in a state that has a "shall issue" policy on concealed weapons carry. I have a permit and I do carry a handgun. I won't even need to take you to the worst places to have you see drug slinging on porches and in schoolyards, and for you likely to need to change your pants, or at least wanting to get back in the car.
The likelihood of a jury recommending death may well be higher if the guilty party is Black, but there are large numbers of White men on death rows as well. Part of the reason is that states with the largest death row populations (California, Florida, Texas) also have large Black populations and high crime rates.
In California, a death sentence is most likely to be a life sentence. They currently have 660 inmates on death row and have performed a total of 13 executions since capital punishment was reinstated in 1976. Is LWOP (life without parole) too harsh for murder?
US death row population peaked in 2000 and is now 7-8% lower than at that time. Given that many more death sentences are handed out than are ever actually carried out, this must mean only one thing. These inmates are getting old and are dying in prison of natural causes.
The largest per capita number of executions in 2007 were performed in Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Libya. What do they all have in common?
In July 2007, father of two Ja’Far Kiani was stoned to death for adultery in Iran.
In November 2007, Mustafa Ibrahim, an Egyptian national, was beheaded in Saudi Arabia for the practice of sorcery.
I'm not meaning to poke at Islam. You opened the door by poking at Christianity's past foibles. If you want to separate how Men corrupt the message, then we are free to have this discussion on both sides. I wish more people saw a message of peace instead of the practice of terrorists who strap bombs on children and kill them and other innocents. I wish that Hamas, an Islamic organization supported by Iran, an Islamic state, would renounce its desire to destroy the State of Israel. These are real world events occurring now, not historical events like the Crusades and Inquisitions that occurred centuries ago.
By the way, I am not a Christian and I'm not a big fan of the death penalty. I am White. My closest not-family member friend is a Black Christian minister. He thinks that I am way too liberal in my views. That gives you a background on me.