In the name of God

A 9-year-old child is repeatedly raped by her step-father and ends up pregnant. The tiny body, incapable of supporting even one fetus, ends up with twins. Giving birth may kill her, warn doctors, and carry out an abortion. The media latch on to the story and realize with a shudder that crimes of this genre - incestuous rape - are on a rise in their country, Brazil.

And in this gruesome episode, what is the public outcry about?
Whether the abortion is appropriate.

That's right, a child has been the victim of extreme violence and is now on the road to lose her life in childbirth, and a section of the populace is wondering whether the abortion was right in the eyes of God.

Meanwhile, Brazil's Roman Catholic Church decides to take a stand.
It excommunicates the mother and the associated doctors for carrying out the abortion. It lets the child stay in the fold because she is too young to be excommunicated. The father however, is deemed sufficiently worthy to beg for God's forgiveness.

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A 17-year-old girl is flogged in public. Lying face-down on the ground, with men holding her position by gripping her hands and feet, she is whipped with a leather strap over the same area of her buttocks over and over again. She cries out to be forgiven for her crime and struggles vainly, but forget mercy, one of the men watching her suggests she be held more tightly.

Her crime: to be seen in public with her father-in-law, when in fact she should have been chaperoned by a man who is either her husband or a blood relative. To be seen with someone else was equivalent to having an affair with him, decreed the Taliban, who control the Swat Valley in Pakistan (where this episode took place), and who, by the way, are in line to be the region's official controllers as per a 'peace treaty' underway.

A mobile phone video of the punishment was widely circulated in Pakistan and has drawn protests from the public, however, there is no dearth of defenders:

"How can we term it un-Islamic?" said Mufti Munibur Rehman, a leading Muslim scholar in a televised debate. "this is the punishment that is writen in the holy Quran."

(quote as reported in The Wall Street Journal)

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Here's what I think:
If you need God to point out what is cruel and what is just, then no religion can save your soul.