Free The Worst of Me by Kate Le Vann Page B

make you unfathomably angry.’
    I didn’t answer, just kept clicking, typing things intosearch boxes. I’d found Jonah’s username – everyone at school had to use the same format, their initials and then a four digit code based on their birthday and school year. And Nashriq, Dom, Steve, a lot of other sixth-form boys I didn’t know. Lewis popped up now and again to supply dorky science facts against creationism.
    On the whole, though, it was like Dee had said. There were dozens of links posted by Jonah, Dom and Steve to stories about oppression in the Middle East and Asia, consequences of Sharia law, honour killings, bombings of girls’ schools, execution. In between these were long threads of discussion, Jonah’s side getting more sarcastic as Nashriq’s side got angrier. It was hard to keep a clear head when I was trying to read it. And some of the posts had been deleted by a school moderator, but the replies were left, making it obvious what had been said.
    Nash:
You’re free to believe all religion is ‘mumbo jumbo from bongo bongo land’ if you like, but it is a very simplistic view. To compare Islam to witch doctors just shows how little you understand.
    Whether an all-powerful being created Earth or whether it just randomly appeared out of absolute nothingness is something everyone needs to work out for themselves. Religion should not be used to answer questions about science and it’s misleading to say all followers of religion use it for that reason. There areChristians who don’t believe in evolution and Christians who’ve furthered scientific advancement. There have been great Islamic scientists throughout history. There doesn’t have to be a conflict
.
    You have also misrepresented ‘Islamic law’ as you call it (i.e. the Madhahib) but it’s clear, given the level of your debate up to now, that you haven’t read anything about the thing you’re mocking. The simple fact is that portraying Islam as a deeply divided group of sects, all constantly fighting over minor interpretations is false. I won’t pretend the Islamic community is a shining example of unity, but there are beliefs that are important to us that do unite us. NOT violent beliefs.
    Steve:
Muslims are united? Presumably you all agree with the parts of the Koran that say the sun orbits the Earth, not to mention the belief that all homosexuals and adulterous women should be stoned to death.
    Nashriq’s posts were angry, but clear and clever, and made sense to me. My friends’ posts were more like taunts, especially Steve’s, and Steve didn’t listen to a word Nash said, he just kept repeating whatever he’d said. But even so . . . Jonah’s links made depressing reading. If the horrible things they claimed were happening in Islamic countries were true, then wasn’t it right that Jonah and his friends showed people what was really going on, what the consequences of religious beliefs were? They didn’t only talk about Muslims:there were posts about zealous Christians in America, too: creationists, polygamists, Christians who believed that American soldiers deserved to die, not because they were fighting wars and killing people, but because the US army allowed homosexuals to enlist – they went to soldiers’ funerals to scream hate-filled taunts. But reading about them wouldn’t make me believe that an average British vicar had the same opinions, just because they were all Christians. So why did Nashriq think my friends were attacking the whole Islamic religion, just because they were pointing out abuses in the name of Islam? And, even if that was their intention, how was it the same as racism?
    I ended up reading everything, trying to find something that told me either way that things were good or bad. And I started getting why Nashriq was so angry. When Christianity came up, it was always one little group of extremists, usually deep in rural America. When it was Islam, it was always ‘Muslims believe . . .’ Even my